The word Purusa is used to denote the soul (atman).
It is used in the Veda (Rg. Yajus, Saman, Atharvan)
in connection with the creation and praise of the
Purusa (Purusa-sukta). Usually it is translated to
mean the embodied being or Personality. Its first
use is Cosmic or even transcendent and creation
itself is shown to be a kind of Sacrifice of Purusa,
Yajna. Later we find that embodiedness or having a
body was dropped and the term Purusottama was used
by the Bhagavad-Gitacarya, Sri Krsna, to designate
the Supreme Creator.Whether it is a body of matter
or from which all matter came into being, the
Supreme Self of all is called a Person or Purusa.

The word has been derived by some from another word
used in the Rg-Veda : Purisa, meaning abundantly
filling (pur : to fill and isa, as
abundant). Some have tried to derive Purisa from the
Pur to mean the city or town and isa to be
the lord : the embodied soul is said to the lord of
the City with nine gates (navadvara-puri),
the human body.

However, it appears that Purusa can be derived also
from the root pu : meaning to purify. The
Purusa is one who is pure and untouched by
all the works of the body or the effects. It is
seen that this conception has been a metaphysical
concept in respect of the Purusa in Sankhya and
those who follow it.

Purusa means the pure Being. The concept parallel to
this is the concept of God as Actus Purus :
pure activity. This is the view held by Aristotle of
God, who is the opposite of the world wherein impure
material mixed activity is available. Indeed the
self or soul is utterly free from the material
activity and thus its pure nature as inactive is
affirmed as a resolute differentiam from matter,
even as the word Nirguna is the refutation of the
triguna in respect of the soul.

Purusa as actus purus or pure activity which
is detached from the triple activity of matter which
are darkening and capable of causing suffering is
the very nature of the Purusa in sankhya. Indeed one
type of activity is granted to the soul which is
otherwise stainless or guiltless in respect of
matter : it passively looks on and identifies itself
with material modifications (vikrtis) and
enjoys too. This Saksi-caitanya is its nature and
this theoretical on looking is pure in so far as it
is not affected by the dances of Nature.

Thus it is suggested that the word Purusa seems to
reflect two concepts viz. (i) the pure activity
concept as suggested in the word purusa (Öpu) and (ii) as
the self indwelling in the body with nine gates (purisa).
But see Brh. Up. I. iv. 1. where purusa is so
called because purvo’smat sarvasmat sarvan papmana
ausat tasmat Purusa ausati’. . . He is of all things
consumed by fire of all sins. The above suggestions
get a peculiarly prominent affirmation from quite an
unexpected source. It is the concept of the
Person. Person is usually held to be the
embodied being : so it has metaphysical and even
morphological affinity with the Vedic word Purusa.
The use of this term in a technical sense as
representing a function or a mask in Greek drama
leads us to suspect whether it has not quite a
natural origin. Especially the gods have each a
representative divine function and this function
demands a dress or apparel or form, which
goes along with its name. The actors who have
to impersonate really, that is, to act as another,
have to take up the form suitable to the name. This
form-adoption is done by means of making a likeness
which will suggest the original. In other words, the
persona is an impersonation for an original which is
thus suggested when one perceives the impersonating
form which is similar to that. By itself without
that knowledge of the original this would hardly
convey any sense. Indeed it is this that makes drama
a mirror of reality which it evokes through
suggestion made through masks (forms similar or
identical to the original).

In Sankhya philosophy this becomes very luminous
indeed because all the processes of prakrti are but
masks of the Purusa and ahankara really is the
basic mask of the Purusa (impersonation), and it
is that which makes one mistake the copy for the
original, the persona for the person. This is the
basic illusion which has to be transcended. When
some philosophers compared our life to a drama it
was clear that the function of an enacted drama is
to lift the veil of identity between the persona and
person, and make us see the person without the veil.
This cathartic conception and midwifery conception
of drama have been lost sight of and the enjoyment
theory is substituted. But real enjoyment consists
in this discovery of the duality of persona and
person, and transcendence over persona so to attain
the person. The purusa and person concepts are so
close that it is quite likely that the two were
originally from the same root (dhatu).

The denial of the atman whilst accepting the purisa
concept in Buddhism throws some light over the
struggles with this concept of the embodied self.

Really that which is clear is that there was a time
when the self in so far as it entertained creativity
created for itself a body (out of elements already
existing). The person was a potential enjoyer and
created for itself by its activity (which resembled
thought or buddhi) sustained by an original desire
(trsna) (Iccha) its body or a sequence of bodies :
at the beginning sheaths are the intellectual body,
mental body, subtle bodies and gross bodies which
went pari passu with the worlds of the
different elements or its own environment. Then it
became what it can call its extension of person or
personality. Even now this stage is seen when we
claim rights which are defined as personality. Even
property is said to be an extension of Personality.

Psychological definitions of personality have this
same exterior behaviour pattern. Thus these indicate
a person but consider that without these
personality-factors the person is a ghost or
something like that.

The metaphysical philosopher on the other hand
discovered that the person is the eternal witness
sustaining the process of creation upto the limit
and enjoying the inventiveness that he has. The
person discovers his potentiality or personality in
creative adventure in evolution.

The Purusa thus is said to sacrifice in creation
(yajna) by projection of himself. The whole process
of creation is the projection of the personality of
the Divine Person. It is his aisvarya, virya, jnana,
bala, sakti and tejas that are exhibited at each
point.

The individual soul in its person has thus same
possibility but due to lack of inward stability of
jnana or saccidananda, it identifies itself just as
an actor or even as the audience does, and feels
intimacy with the created rather than with the
creator.

There are two types of persons, those who have
finished their creativity for it is shown to be
finite, and those who have not. The first type
returns to the person from its own personality and
the second moves from person to the personality
losing consciousness of its own person.

The one which has seen the limits of its own
personality yearns no more for it : whereas those
who have not progress hoping for an infinite
enjoyment of their creation. Of course the latter is
bound to discover the limits for it is seen that
there is an automatic reverse after reaching the end
of the creativity in the organic or material world.

The concept of the Purusa thus is closely linked up
with the concept of the Person and as such it is
likely that one would be able to discover an
Indo-Germanic root which will place them together.
The euphonic element also suggests this
identification. Person has been derived by some
scholars from per = through, son =
sound. Thus a person is one who is known through
sound. Sound would probably mean talk or language.
It seems in drama a character is known through his
sound or talk. This derivation is most fanciful.
Here we have a case of deriving the meaning from the
character. The persona as a mask or garb or make-up
for a character to represent a character or person
is understandable, though to derive person from
dramatis persona is rather a reversal of
interpretation.

Therefore it appears that person is the original
word, and it closely corresponds to the Sanskrit
word Purusa which has had a hoary history.

It appears that the word person or purusa had
undergone many changes. One of them at least is that
it because paras and later parasu. The
great Rama of the Axe (Parasu-Rama) was originally
Purusa Rama (Rama Jamadagnya). Waddell has made
certain remarks in his Indo-Sumerian studies.

The Vaikhanasa Agama considers that the original
Transcendent Godhead is Purusa.

My studies on the correspondences between the Five
Nights, Five Daytimes and Five Agnis lead me to the
conclusion that the avatara known as Parasurama was
in fact the fulfilment of the Fivefold Fires –
Bhrgu, Cyavana, Apnuvana, Aurva and jamadagni, who
were all discoverers of the five levels of Fire or
five different kinds of fire – (my Idea of God
: chapter on the Pancaratra Conception of God).

4.2 The Sensory and the Supersensory Perceptions

The recognition of a supersensory perception on the
part of scientists has been quite tardy. The
physiological scientists could not believe how our
ordinary senses-and they are five-could ever grant
us knowledge about things as they are in themselves.
But they had also to admit that knowledge for man is
entirely restricted to the indriyas, organs,
mainly because these sense – organs are our
instruments of knowledge of objects. Whether the
objects stimulate our sense – organs or our sense –
organs reach out to them and get stimulated, it is
not very much important, for this depends upon the
urge from within or pressure from without. Our sense
– knowledge then, is our only knowledge of facts or
objects and this type of knowledge is what we
observe or experiment with, to gain. We do not know
exactly what the objects or things themselves are in
themselves without these sense – characteristics
which they have for sense – dependent and sense –
organised beings like ourselves. We have our
knowledge of the external world both through the
jnanendriyas enumerated as the organs of sight,
hearing sound, taste, smell and touch but also,
through the karmendriyas known or rather
enumerated as vak (mouth and speech) (organ
of food), hands, legs, excrement and enjoyment or
production of offspring (sex). All these variety of
knowledge belongs to the objects of the world which
offers goals of satisfaction of organic needs. Our
artha – purushartha and kama –
purushartha get realised through the knowledge
provided by the jnanendriyas and karmendriyas.

We can have exact knowledge of these objects
provided we have developed objective observation
without attachment, provided we have sense – organs
and motor organs in healthy condition, and provided
also we avoid conditions which are likely to distort
our sense – motor knowledge. The scientists have
prescribed that our scientific sensory knowledge
should be as exact as possible, as precise as
possible, in order to be true (prama). The
development of instruments of scientific knowledge
or observation has helped us in providing
instruments not only of precision but of depth.
Measurement also has been rendered possible of all
that host of scientific discoveries in respect of
optical and auditory and other kinds of wave –
lengths and vibrations and in fact our ever –
growing and widening horizons of observation of even
the subatomic particles only reveals that there is
possibly no end to the dimensions of our sensory
knowledge. But all these are not non – sensory and
in a sense, the gross senses, unassisted by these
inventions, could hardly help us to affirm either
their existence or their truth. Thus, broadly
speaking, our sensory knowledge is strictly limited
in its range but, with the help of instruments, one
could extend it very much. These perceptions in a
sense, could be called extra sensory if we accept
the meaning to be extended sensory knowledge.
Microscopes, electronic scopes, tele scopes and etc.
are accessory to sense extending the area of
perceptions.

The modern writers on Extra-Sensory Perceptions like
Prof. Rhine had demonstrated that we can ‘see’
without the instrumentality of sense organs. This
has been tested under experimental conditions and
with a great deal of probability affirmed to take
place. Thus we do have sense – experiences such as
seeing forms, hearing talks, or feeling presence of
scents and so on, without the help of the
physiological organs which are said to be absolutely
necessary for the knowledge of objects for the
normal man. The whole question is whether this kind
of sensory experience (not sense – organ
perceptions, indriya – janya jnana) is normal
to man or is specially gifted to some persons. We
are aware that among animals and birds and bats a
high degree of acuity is present in the sense –
organs themselves. But there must be some kind of
reception of stimuli from objects which these sense
organs pick up. Do we have any reason to think that
the specially gifted individuals of ESP are
possessed of such highly evolved or acute sense –
organs? Further in ESP, it is also known that there
is interruption of a direct impac or the sense –
organ with the object and yet the object is sensed.
If this is the case, then the animal or insectual
acuity is over – ruled. It is definitely a case of
non – sensory sense – experience or non organic
sense – experience. This of course opens up the
problem whether in fact there can be sensorial
experiences without sense organs and if so should we
not conclude that objects have senses which are
necessarily grasped by sense – organs.

Indian theoretical or metaphysical thinking had
concluded that since the sense – organs themselves
evolved out of a subtle substance called buddhi
(chit) (some have held it is subtle
I-activity, ahamkara) these properties of
sensory experience which are potentially or subtly
and more eminently in it, present us with a subtle
knowledge inaccessible to the sense – organs. It is
the gross properties that these sense – organs are
enabled through their physiologically constructed
organs help to gather. Thus man can recover this
capacity which undoubtedly operates even under our
present conditions by shutting out the sense –
experiences brought to man through his sense –
organs. If our sense – organs could only give us
present knowledge or knowledge before us now, it is
quite possible that the ahamkara or buddhi could
present knowledge – sensorial – sensorial of the
past and present and future as well, of that which
is distant and near and beyond the sense – organ
ranges too. Thus buddhi – pratyaksa or
aham – pratyaksa is atindriya – beyond
sense – organ ranges of comprehension. This may
include the ESP. This may be possible for one and
all under certain conditions of insulation of the
sensory organs or when there happens a tremendous
psychic need that enforces the operations of the
higher mind and will (buddhi and ahamkara)
for the sake of preservation of the individual. Such
conditions are precisely those that some teachers
train some to enable them to have these buddhi-ja
or atma-ja experiences which do have sensory
nature but very much subtle and fulfilling or exact.

Yoga pratyaksa has been claimed to be an
important supersensory means of attaining experience
of the subtle forms of matter, like the atoms and
their constituents. In fact the descriptions given
of an atom (anu) as having six sides and so
on or as having subtle properties are claimed to be
got through the yogic pratyaksa or that perception
which develops under the yogic states of Sanyama
or concentration. The yoga sutras indeed speak of
the supersensory means of knowing the properties of
the anus or tanmatras which are the causal states of
the gross elements known to us through the
respective sensory organs. It is this capacity to be
able to perceive the tanmatras or anus
that perhaps renders the sensory organs of the yogis
super-subtle. In any case, it is well known that
even the yogic powers of walking on water and flying
in air and so on are super-activities of the motor
organs as well. The strict disciplines of yama,
niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara and dharana
are necessary for this development. Through
hathayoga one masters these processes. In fact so
advanced is the yogic technique in the earlier
periods that the yogic pratyaksa could see
how the transformation and re-formation of objects
take place by the subtle changes taking place in the
atomic structures of the objects. Thus the black
brick becomes red brick and with different
properties by the introduction of the fire-atoms and
the throwing out of the water – atoms and this takes
place in either of the two ways, pilu-paka or
pithara-paka according to the Vaisesikas who
seem to have turned out to be the earliest
alchemists in India. This branch of study of the
subtle changes or modifications or substitutions and
transformations of micro-elements is now a forgotten
chapter in Indian alchemy.

The Yoga – ja pratyaksa however shows that we
do have the knowledge of subtle tanmatras or
ingredients of the objects through subtle sensory
organs. However so far as we are aware, though we
have mention of the subtle tanmatras or atoms or
sub-atoms which are said to be the cause of the
gross elements or objects which are composite
substances, there is hardly any mention of the
existences of the subtle sensory – organs generally
in Indian physiological literature. However, there
instead, we find mention of the nadis and
chakras and which are invisible to the naked eye
and which indeed operate to bring up the experiences
of the subtle changes in the body to the individual.
Here we find Yogic psychology of invaluable help for
the supersensory cognitions.

Though we reach up to this level of sensitivity, we
are said to be yet in a field wherein there can be
much disillusionment or rather we are yet in the
region of Maya or Illusion, only more subtle and
therefore more invidious than our gross experiences
of objects. The fact that an experience is yoga –
ja does not ipsofacto make it true or veridical.

Saints therefore did not feel it right to develop
these supersensory cognitions of the atomic and sub
– atomic elements that are at the bottom of all the
changes that we witness in the outer world. It is
the province of physical scientists and though
excellent as knowledge, these discoveries do not
lead to the attainment of the liberated individual.
It is however true that, science does give one a
sense of liberty from the ignorance about matter and
its infinite permutations and combinations of
sub-atomic (paramanu) forces which today we
are calling nuclear energies. They could be misused
for the destruction of man, they could be misused
for misguiding man and also for putting the clock of
evolution back. Our very knowledge might become an
instrument of human torture and misery. Our
knowledge of the technique of creating deceptions
based on the laws of light and photographical
innovations has been in fact quite a success in two
directions : the discovery of the psychological
truth that man tries to escape into these deceptions
as condition of security against boredom and outer
misery and, secondly, as a great phantastic
alienating man from his goal.

The supersensory cognitions however showed one thing
that they are the field of operations of most pseudo
mystics or saviours. The performance of miracles
strikes terror as well as induces confidence in
those who are witness to these miracles. They are
invaluable faith – inducers but nonetheless they
have a tendency to arrest the inward aspiration for
the higher than the supersensory fields. The
supersensory fields are undoubtedly very vast, and
indeed, we can hazard the statement that the
possibilities of our knowledge of the Cosmos are
very definite and within reach. Cosmic Consciousness
seems to be very much involved in the supersensory
cognitivity. Therefore, it is held that, one sign of
the arising of the Cosmic Consciousness in man, is
the development of supersensory cognitivity. However
it is clear that though one meets with poets of
sensitive vision of this Cosmic Consciousness, their
awareness of liberty is conditioned by the area of
their cognitivity which is not infinite.

The supersensitivity of the cosmic area opens up
quite a vast field. The siddhis of the yoga
school in fact lead us up to the very knowledge of
the creational event or the continuous process of
arising and passing of all things. The words of the
luminous and the dark are opened up to the
cognitivity of the Yogi. Cosmological intuitions
seem to be possible at this level. The real
difficulty of proving these to be true lies in the
subjectivity of these objective realities – there is
much mix up of illusion and reality – a dream world
illuminated by the psychic light – taijasa –
full of tejas, power and light, where at one
point there is an inverse relation between them and
at another cordinated relation.

The true intuitive consciousness or insight however
comes from a still higher level of Being. Though in
passing through the sense organs even of the
supersensible order (nadis and cakras) they
do have both the visual and the auditory qualities,
these intuitions sometimes do not bear any such
trace. So much so it has been held that these are
achromatic and so on and they are purely mental or
supramental, only meanings flash into the
consciousness or they have the quality of lightning
– flash (vidyutva). They illumine the inner
consciousness and later on are given imaginative
bodies so to speak. This level of consciousness or
cognitivity is said to be in terms of ‘ideas’,
‘insights’ ‘intuitions’ and ‘sphota’
(Illuminations). That these are inner auditions and
inner visions having no mediations of the subtle or
gross sense organs seems to be clear. In so far then
as these are beyond the range of the supersensible
Cosmic Consciousness (which is about closest to the
poetic imagination when it is directed not towards
fancy but towards apprehension of eternal cosmic or
universal realities), these sphotas or illuminations
are of the ideal or Soul-order or spiritual. This
means that so far as the cosmic and other visions
are concerned, they are all of the material order –
prakrtic or maya – order of being. Though
omnipotence and power and knowledge are available
for this supersensory cognitivity it is not that
suffices for the full cognitivity, of the Self of
spiritual nature.

The reflected illuminations are no substitutes for
the original light of self which is perhaps
incapable of being equated with the cosmic and
terrestrial sensory lights of our understanding of
matter. It is an invisible light, inaudible sound
and equally intasteable taste, intactual touch and
infragrant fragrance, which the upani sadic teachers
called brahma – rupa, brahma – sabda, brahma –
rasa, brahma – gandha and brahma –
sparsa. It is this spiritual cognitivity that is
the aim of the true yogi, who is true jnani as well,
who knows his own supercosmic awareness to be the
sole Reality of his own ultimate nature or God. This
is the divya jnana which is also para –
jnana of the paraprakrti, that develops into
certainties or indubitabilities of the nature of
Reality and God and self and Nature in an all –
embracing cognizance.

This experience is divya and original got by
the Grace of the Ultimate which means, that it is
something that is absolutely beyond both the senses
and the super-senses and the mind that is tied down
or up to these material objects.

The Isa Upanisad says that it is this attainment of
supercognitivity that makes one see reality in all
its forms and manifestations in its eternal nature –
in its essence or satya. This is what grants
liberation from all ignorance and massive delusions
and as such, takes one beyond all imperfections and
ignorances which bind man to the eternal chain of
causes and effects, or desire for continuous next
births and deaths for the sake of having new births.

______

Samadhi is not yogic trance which is associated only
with the oblivion of physical and mental selves. In
samadhi, there is neither oblivion nor knowledge of
any object. Forgetfulness and remembrance are with
reference to an object and a state of mind’s
objective awareness. Samadhi is attainment of
absolute Consciousness. In the Absolute, there is no
world, of which body is a part. When the world
itself has no existence in the Absolute, where is
the sense in saying that one forgets the body and
the world during the experience of samadhi?

- Divine Mother

Children, for ages, you have wept. Stop weeping.
Awake to the consciousness of your divine, blissful
nature, and to the ecstasy of devotion. Three types
of tears are holy and pure – the tears of mercy, the
tears of repentance and the tears of God – love.
These tears move the heart of the Almighty to
compassion.

- Divine Mother

4.3 PRATIBHA

Pratibha
1 is
identified with imagination that throws suggestive
light on any subject to which it is directed but
mainly in respect of aesthetic enjoyment (rasa).
Though it is appropriated to aesthetics there is
also a general application of this term.

It consists of a twofold activity (i) the act of
imaginative grasping and (ii) the luminosity that
it throws on the object sought to be grasped.

Literally it means the reflected light cast on the
mind of the knower or seer from the object – a light
that was earlier sent towards the object for knowing
it.

Knowing is the process of grasping the object by
sending mental light towards the object and get it
back. This activity brings back the jnanakara
(form or idea or impression) of the object which
produces a kind of delight of having got the
knowledge. Attainment of knowledge itself yields a
kind of pleasure or delight. It may be painful or
pleasant – frightful or attractive – but also this
is the affective accompaniment to the
knowing-process. It is thus a reflected knowledge
activity – prati-bha. It throws light of the
form on the mind and as such it is said to be a kind
of illumination about the object attained by the
subject, the knower.

In pratyaksa – perception through the sight –
it is the same process: the seeing light in the eye
induced by the mind goes to the object and brings
back the impression to the mind – a kind of return
light – or counter-light or reflected light. All
knowledge thus is reflected light from the object,
but the knowing light is of the subject knowing and
the return light is from the object and is the
second stage of the subject-light laden with the
impression of the object. This reveals the object to
the subject; but it is the subject’s light that is
attained now laden with the impression of the
object. All knowledge is in this sense a knowing
which involves the movement of consciousness to the
object and return from it. Since all knowledge is of
this kind – idealists hold that the object itself is
knowledge whereas all that we can call knowledge is
only the impression of the object in the mind of the
subject. It is true that it would be difficult to
know what the object is in itself, for all that can
be known is only its form as received through the
knowing-light.

That all objective knowledge is of this order can be
fully known by the terms used to signify knowledge
activity: we have already referred to praty-aksa:
praty-abhijna or memory is also a kind of
returning light from memory which is the store-house
of all impressions – and is objective knowledge.

Pratyaksa
is a reflected knowledge of the object confronting
the subject. Pratibha is the reflected
knowledge of the object as idea confronting the
individual. Pratika is the revelational
confronting of the Divine Form to which we grant a
special status, and have it as an object of worship.
Pratyabhijna is just memory or remembrance of
things forgotten – may be of the metaphysical
relationship as with God or of the ordinary
remembrance of events or of previous life
friendships or animosities etc.

IItc "II"

The above section dealt with only the use of the
prefix prati. In fact there are other uses
such as pratyaya, pratyagat, etc.
which are used as words of knowledge activity or
attainment.

In Grammar pratibha is used as vakyartha
or the meaning suggested by the words or
proposition. The word pratibha is not found
in the Mahabhasya. But the analysis of the word has
led to a two-point view: (i) the meaning from the
speaker’s point of view and (ii) meaning from the
listener’s point of view; or rather since the above
is clumsily stated, we can say that the first is
meaning as grasped by the subject or the person
uttering the sentence or word or proposition and the
second is meaning as grasped by the listner of the
same sentence or word or proposition. A proposition
or even a word cannot be without some meaning. In
fact it is meaning that illumines the mind and thus
all knowledge is meaning. Non-sense words are
meaningless so long as they are not given some
conventional meaning. In fact we always perceive
that we attach meaning to nonsense syllables or
words or conjunct sounds arbitrarily too in order to
remember them. Experiments in memorizing has clearly
pointed out that the very tendency of the mind or
intelligence is to give arbitrary meaning or
lighting to the sounds that we hear. On this basis
some thinkers have universalized or rather
generalized the view that all meaning is imposed or
conventionalized and made customary usage. Whilst we
may grant this view, the study of the origins of
language shows that somehow the so-called arbitrary
attribution of meaning to sounds, letters, words and
even group of sounds, letters and words (idiom) go
beyond the human invention theory.

Not only is a meaning just a light thrown or
returned from the object perceived or sounds grasped
but also it is involved in action. Kamalasila seems
to have argued that pratibha is an insight
leading to an action. If we remember that all
knowledge is also for action, and the verification
of knowledge lies in its use in action (arthakriya-karitva)
then it would follow that pratibha is
basically a dynamic meaning – not a passive
knowledge but an active agent for action, either as
an obligation or imperative. Thus we could
understand why the Mimamsakas emphasized that all
propositions entail an imperative (a vidhi or
a nisedha).

All knowledge is also activity, and is intended for
activity. They cannot be separated from one another.
In fact they are one activity, though
distinguishable and separable too in some cases.
Jnana and karma are in fact one activity,
mutually reinforcing and attaining the result.
Isavasyopanisad has given a classic guidance in this
matter: vidyanca avidyanca yas tad veda ubhayam
saha avidyaya mrtyum tirtva vidyaya amrtam asnute//

IIItc "III"

This leads us to one other consideration, namely,
the relationship between the buddhindriyas
and karmendriyas in Indian psychology.

The evolutionary theory of Samkhya and the Bhagavad
Gita are similar except for the fact that
ahamkara is earlier than the buddhi in
the Gita, whereas it is an evolute of buddhi
(mahat)1 in
the former. This of course shows that buddhi
as universal is earlier to the individuating
empirical ego in Samkhya, but in the Gita the
buddhi is already an individuated intellection –
reflecting the self to itself in its individuated
condition. In fact the activity of cognition is
clearly one by which the buddhi is reflecting
back the consciousness to the ego along with the
experiences of objects which it has evolved.
Prati-bha at this level is just prati-bimba
or reflective knowledge of the objects, or the self
itself. This of course entails a distortion or
inversion in knowing itself before it reaches the
self whose consciousness it is that is thus
reflected.

This is not an important fact as much as when we
consider the fact that all the five buddhindriyas
and the five karmendriyas are arising out
of the ahamkara or the manas. In fact
the Gita mentions manas sastan indriyani and
perhaps excludes the five karmendriyas. But
if we examine closely it should be seen that the
five buddhindriyas pair with the five
karmendriyas and they have also as objects the
respective tanmatras which are five and
bhutas which are five and these twenty form an
integral unity in knowledge. This is not a
far-fetched ingenious view at all for it is in fact
the way things happen.

Thus we can see that see that

Srotra sabda
akasa vag

Caksus rupa
tejas pani

Tvak sparsa
vayu pada

Ghrana gandha
prthivi payu

Rasana rasa
ap upastha

The above table will
show the corresponding objects and the activities of
the karmendriyas in respect of those objects.
Knowledge of an object is not complete without the
ability to use it. That this activity in so far as
it is not efficient or is unadopted may and does
lead to failure and sorrow is a fact. But in order
that knowledge may be definite and exact it must
satisfy both the criteria of virtual action and
actual action. If we consider that sense-knowledge
is virtual action as Bergson has said, then
action-knowledge results in efficient and skilled
knowledge that leads to action unconditionally.

Thus though it is
argued by some that action is an extraneous test of
truth, yet in another sense it is intrinsic to all
truth that it can be used to bring about a result.
This fact is realised in the explanation of the
Nyaya’s so-called paratah-pramana but it is
really intrinsic svatah pramana according to
Mimamsa. It is when we do not see the
integral oneness of knowledge and action, vidya
and avidya, we begin to think that avidya
will lead to bondage and knowledge alone will lead
to freedom. This is not true, for knowledge guiding
action or towards knowledge is the proper direction
towards freedom and efficiency or skill, whereas
action not so guided but guiding knowledge may lead
to bondage for it is the reverse method.

Returning to Pratibha, we can see that in
true insight that is dynamic the two are not
separated – knowledge guides through the light that
it has secured all action. Meaning in a proposition
thus is rendered dynamic for action as well as
expression, and freedom is achieved and this grants
real pleasure or aesthetic pleasure (rasa).
It is in fact a great truth that real rasa is
only possible when it has both the characteristics
of light and being (sat and cit –
sat typifying existence (activity) and cit
exemplifying light – pratibha).

IVtc "IV"

Naturally the problem of pratibha is
connected by certain thinkers with the concept or
experience of sphota or flashing illumination
of meaning whenever one sees anything. This involves
the view that every object does illumine our
consciousness even before we try to see it. This
kind of knowledge is stimulated or given by the
object as a self-revelation, not something that is
got by the effort of the individual’s consciousness
or cognitive activity to get the jnanakara
(formal idea) of the object. The view held is that
every object is a unity of name and form (namarupa),
and when we perceive the form (rupa) the name
is flashed back and when the name is heard the form
is flashed back. This is an original synthesis in
creation. In our conventional language- patterns the
form and name are in the form of conditional
reflexive unity. The ancient view is that though the
modern conventional language is arbitrary, if we
look sufficiently back we will find that there is an
original name-form unity. It is to this unity that
Poet Kalidasa refers in his famous sloka:
vagarthav iva samprktau. In fact I have tried to
show2
that the usual
method of explaining the six-fold contact in all
perception given in the scholastic textbooks on
Indian Logic have bungled all along. The contacts
are stated to be (i) samyoga – the contact
between the indriya (manas) and the object (dravya):
(ii) this gives rise to the knowledge of the quality
of the ‘that’ (dravya), and since this
quality is inherent in the dravya this
contact is called samyuktasamavaya:
the (iii) contact is with the samanya
(generality) which is inherent in the quality (guna),
and this is called samyukta samaveta samavaya:
The next (iv) is said to be the perception of
hearing or sound and since sound is said to be the
quality of the ether in the ear (srotra-akasa)
it is stated to be samavaya: But it is here
that we meet with a difficulty. It is not then a
sound that is objective but subjective and therefore
it is impossible to concede that this is any real
perception of an objective sound with which the ear
should be in contact. Thus really this is a case of
samyukta-samavaya or mere samyoga with
the sound. But suppose we take it that this sound
comes from the thing or dravya with which it
is inherent then it would be a case of samyukta
samavaya – the name being in the same status as
the form (quality) and thus a dravya now gets
both a name and form, and this is a complete
knowledge than an unutterable (anirvacaniya)
form – experience. Of course (v) this sound can
only be meaningful in the context of a universal
language or that language block and also the
complete knowledge of a thing would not only include
name and form but also location in space and time.
The (vi) contact thus is with respect of the
existence of an object in space and time expressed
in terms of reciprocal existence-non- existence (visesana
and visesya and abhava). Sphota
as illumination is a natural power but when it is
sought to be made into a mysterious power of each
letter and each sound or even half sound, and when
it is further sought to be made into a Godhead or
the final Godhead (Brahman), the Vedantic
thinkers rejected it in that form as an ultimate
reality. Rightly too.

If sphota is the original sound (vibration)
illumining the object with meaning – then its
objective reality is something that is grasped in
relevation. We have enough examples even in the
Upanisads to show that meanings are given to sounds
or individual sounds and these are not conventional
at all: they look arbitrary and conventional
symbolic language – and they called it mantrika
meanings: that which transcends thought as human
beings know it. But these mantra – sphota are
also known through pratibha so far as the
individual is concerned.

These are twin-concepts and to deny the one whilst
reducing the other to the aesthetic sphere is to
have lost sight of the basic integrality of
experience as both name and form and not easily to
be equated with the empirical knowledge alone. The
yogic knowledge reveals the importance of both and
makes mantra meaningful as also attain the
goal of realisation (tantra).

If sabda or sruti is the meaningful
means towards real and true knowledge of Brahman, it
follows that in a sense the knowledge of sabda
in all its fullest capacities should be got. The
illuminative character of sabda is not
capable of being had by the mere ratiocination of
the texts without the luminous light of the
sphota and pratibha mingling to make one
enter into the sanctum of Reality. That we worship
the Veda as the sabda-brahman only shows that
the really valuable sabda that can straight
lead us to insight into Brahman is this incomparable
Veda Sabda. It is not an independent Brahman,
claiming a separate allegiance but an altogether
valuable means to the Ultimate Brahman who is the
illuminator of all these and illumined by these
reflexively so to speak and is the saccid
ananda.

4.4 THE DOCTRINE OF THE PARAKIYA

The doctrine of parakiya has been interpreted
in various ways-we can distinguish the right
interpretation from the wrong interpretation by a
consideration of the purport of this concept.
Kalidasa, the eminent poet of India, has stated the
view about parakiya in his Sakuntala:

Artho hi Kanya
Parakiya eva

tamadya
sampresya parigrahituh

Jatmamayam
visadah prakamam

Pratyarpita
nyasa ivantaratma. (III)

The girl belongs to another (not to the parent) and
has to be returned to him even as one places oneself
at the feet of the Suprems Self (of all) by way of
returning one’s treasure to him real owner.

In this profound analogy Kalidasa illustrates the
fact that the returning of God’s treasure to him is
the act of nyasa (offering or placing) the
soul (the individual soul) to its owner, God. This
was so well known in his time that he uses it as the
upamana whilst making the returning of a girl
to her husband is the upameya. Here it is
legitimate and legal and profoundly social. It would
certainly be wrong to suggest that since a girl is
another’s or man’s she could be given to any other
man as his legally wedded wife. Such cannot be the
meaning that Kalidasa gives. He always showed the
path of dharma of righteous conduct.

The upamana is interesting
from the metaphysical point of view. The soul is
compared to a kanya - one who is of the age of
marriage or one who has come to the state of having
chosen marriage or married whose business or urgent
need is to go to her husband. The Supreme Being or
God is said to be the real master and support of the
souls and the urgency of the soul is its maturity of
knowledge that it is no longer its own (svatantra)
but that of another (partantra). The Other in
this case is God alone, the Transcendent being known
as the Para-ultimately transcendent. The
choice of the Ultimate Being has been intimated by
such phrases as Original (Adi) Source (Mulam).
The Pancatatra makes out that though there
are vyuha, vibhava, harda and
arca as the other or lower statutes of the
Godhead the soul should seek para-sayuja etc
rather than vyuha, vibhava, harda
and arca-sayuja . Thus the alvar says
that the supreme Narayana speaks of the granting of
the Para (Final or Ultimate Being) rather
than the more familiar and other forms of vyuha,
vibhava, harda and arca. (Narayanane
namakke parai taruvan; Goda’s Tiruppavai).

Thus it is to be known the one ultimately belongs to
and should be supported by, enjoyed by and
determined by the Supreme Para, the truly
other than every other soul or status of God
Himself.

The Visnu Purana speaks of the souls being female
and the Divine Lord alone as the only male and
therefore all females should wed the One Deity. All
these will show that the Divine the Para has
to be surrendered to or offered oneself to as one’s
own Self one’s own(svakiya).

The problem of love has been one of the most
baffling problems in the history of mankind. It
means indeed the assumption that one cannot be truly
one’s own but that one needs another for completing
one’s existence. The need for another felt and
yearned after is one of the baffling problems of
sex-biology. The biological need for another is for
the sake of the progeny - a biological arrangement
for the continuance of the species or race or
community or some such institution. The biological
unfortunately is not the main factor in human
evolution. We find that this need that is felt for
another of one’s own sex or the other sex is not at
all based on the biological need for continuance of
the species or kind but personally as a sense of
completeness of one’s life through another. This
non-biological need is the human development of need
for another. That this cuts across the biological
makes many think that this is an abnormality and it
is well known that D.H. Lawrence used to portray
this abnormal type in his novels. He called this a
blood craving or need, and this breaks all the
conventions that man has made for the biological
need. This ‘human need’ of another for the sake of
another or more precisely for the sake of
completeness of perfection of one’s own personality
through integration or union with another male or
female is said to be what one should aim at in
social reconstruction.

This concept of union not for the sake of progeny or
the survival of the species but for the completion
of one’s personality can be called the principle of
marriage in human society; and perhaps its efficacy
will be emphasized by its being consciously opposed
to the biological sexual relations which depends on
the principle of survival of race.

This is of course to be substantiated by the
metaphysical discussion as to the basic relationship
fundamental to the existence of sexual relationships
in human society or higher rational society - which
is conceived more and more as a-sexual or
supra-sexual.

The Bhakti schools of India had postulated that the
individual soul in so far as it seeks, yearns and
devotes itself to finding out that ‘Other’ which can
complete it or perfect it or fulfil it is basically
of the nature of a female, dependent on one superior
to it. But this is not of course the only
relationship which is that of dependence for in a
deeper sense one’s body can be considered to be
dependent on the soul than a woman on her husband or
male. Still others have raised the dependence to the
level of power or sakti on the owner of power, just
as the rays depend on the Source of light more than
the body is dependent on the soul. These analogies
had supplied degrees of dependence as capable of
being visualised. The Upanisads have indeed held
these views. The need for the ‘Other’s or God is in
fact the entire aspiration for realization,
perfection, salvation etc, Yajnavalkya has expressed
this in his most inimitable manner na va are patvuh
kamaya paith priyo bhavaty atmanastu kamaya paith
priyo bhavati; na va are jayayai kamaya jaya priya
bhavaty atmanasti kamaya jaya priyo bhavati ...

Thus every thing becomes objects of love or
affection because of the Self or the ‘Other’ (Para)
by whom everything lives and moves and has its
being.

He has also stated that everything is His body* -
utterly dependent on Him for their existence,
continuance and emancipation or release; though none
of them knows to be so; All are His body,
individually and collectively. That is the nature of
the Inner Self (antarartma) to which Kalidasa
makes reference. It is clear that this antaratma
is also the Para the transcendent Person know
as the Purusottama, or Uttama Purusa, who is other
than (anyah) the other purusas, know as the
Ksara and Aksara in the Gita.

The individual soul in society attains several types
of relationship and the most intimate is said to be
that of husband and wife. This relationship though
conceived and fomented by the desire for progeny
ultimately at the human level is that which
culminates in the desire for each other. This is
said to be the nature of Sringara and of all the
sentiments (rasas) this sentiment of love
¾
the need for the other ¾
is said to be the most dramatisable and productive
of greatest happiness or joy. It is not necessary at
this point to refer to the sophistication that has
developed this representation of this sentiment into
a formal method and an art. That might be truly a
decorative method (alamkara) for
communication of what the nature of emotional
stimulation of this sentiment should be like. Bhakti
as a Rasa has been claimed to be capable of being
represented and dramatized and made into a technique
with whom God as hero and the souls as heroines
seeking union with God. The sentiment of devotion
when mixed up with Sringara or love seeking union
with the Para has been represented by the Alvars as
legitimate ontologically sanctioned by the concept
of relationship of the souls with God as similar to
that of the bride to the bridegroom rather than of
lover to the beloved though the former contains the
latter.

There has always been an attempt to make the
illegitimate relation or extra-marital relationship
enjoyable and exciting than the legitimate. It is
this tantric twist that lead to the supreme
expression of love as most effective when it is
illegitimate love for another who is not one’s
husband or one’s wife. It is one which has
relationship with the pancamakaramaithuna
being one of them ¾
a sexual relationship with one who is other than
one’s own legally accepted and recognised. The
utilisation of Radha for this motif among the
tantrically inclined has given slant to this most
holy of existential relationships between God and
soul. The love of the soul to God is personified in
Radha; love it is that sustains the soul (dhara)
in its relationship to God and it is the reciprocal
love of God for the soul that makes him the
supporter (dhara) of the entire universe of
souls. Since he bears the burden of the entire
universe He is the bharta, supporter, bearer
and therefore husband of the entire universe of
souls, whose number is mystically in numerology put
as 16,000, sixteen being the number for fullness or
perfection or completeness.

The soul in so far as it has love in fact is the
power which compels so to speak the Divine
reciprocity of love and union of the soul with God
is the greatest play of the world-creation-nitya-lila
which is nitya-kalyana. This in fact is the
nityotsava of God-soul relationship.

The soul’s love of God has led to certain
assumptions namely it means the giving up of the
relationship of any kind with any other souls. Thus
father, mother, children, husband or wife etc, are
all asked to be given up ¾
this being perhaps one of the meanings given to the
famous sloka of the Bhagavad Gita-Sarva-dharman-parityajya
mam ekam saranam vraja¾
giving up all duties (to all other individuals,
relations etc) seek me alone as your own dharma,
Svadharma a sole dharma, eka dharma. This
is in fact the meaning of sannyasa
renunciation or tyaga of everything other
than God (the Para), and as such it is a
doctrine of Parakiya. The love of God is said
to demand this total or integral self-giving by
which all social and other ties are severed. Thus
the giving up of one’s wife or husband for the sake
of God-love is counselled and admired. This choice
of God is even when one has married another and in
preference to the socially recognized and accepted
husband or wife is admired by all. But this
parakiya is not wrong though perhaps it is not
really what is intended by the integral love that
loves God and through that pure Godly love enriches
the love towards one’s husband or wife or children
or parents. The counsel of Yajnavalkya seems to
suggest that the sole love of God in fact enhances
and increases the love of one’s husband or wife or
relations rather than otherwise as is usually
thought of. God may be jealous in certain religions
but in the Bhagavata and the Upanisads He is the
inner Self of all and the love of Him increases and
enhances one’s love for all others too. Thus one
loves all more rather than less by God ¾
love.

The parakiya of the illegitimate kind
unfortunately treats of the test of love as the
giving up of all conventions or breaking up of them
in order to show an utter disregard for all of them
¾
a kind of perverse egoism (viryam) that
results in fouling the love that is pure and can be
pure. God alone can truely be loved and God alone
loves without jealousy. It is this that makes
bhakti a play of love of all in and through God,
it is that which completes one and perfects one by
union with one’s transcendent counterpart onself the
inner ruler Immortal. Parakiya Bhakti is
illegitimate whereas parakiya priti or
prema or sexual love is illegitimate, The reason
is obvious; bhakti or devotion of two persons
husband and wife, to God is possible for both
acknowledge the primary duty of serving God in every
way. Their unity in mind and speech and body is
forged by the sprit of devotion to God, and they
grow nearer to one another as comrades or companions
or friends (sakha). But when God is reduced to the
level of another man or human being sexually
attracted as in the case of certain kinds of
bhaktas then it becomes very difficult to bring
about a unity of minds. The competitive or jealous
mechanism or complex is set up and the two persons
loved by a woman become rilvals so to speak, though
God does not claim to be the exacting lover who
demands the discarding or divorce of the human
partner. However the entire story of rasa-krida
is riddled at least in the minds of the less
informed and badly mysticised minds so that the
whole dramstization savours of the undivine. Whilst
the attempt has to be sublimate the carnal, what has
resulted was the carnalisation of the sublime. The
Bhakti cults of Krisna thus degenerated into
the carnal sensual love of a humanized Godhead and
hardly in popular minds exalted itself to the level
of divinisation of the sexual love. No wonder it was
firmly rejected by those who have always thought of
pure transcendent love ¾
a love that is the result of the metaphysical
realisation of man’s relation to God the supreme
Self of all, through whom alone such transcendent
love, acosmic even, for all can flow forth in
supernatural abundance. Truly therefore whilst the
great acharyas of the Radha-Krisna cult ¾Rupa Sanatana and Jiva avoided mention
of the parakiya ¾
bhava in
their writings, though they seem to have given rise
to the divine concept of the parakiya rather
than the humanised concept of the parakiya.
(Dr Sushil Kumar De in his Early history of the
Vaisnava Faith and Movement of Bengal), has
noted this clearly (p.350*) and he noted
however that their followers Yadunandan and
Syamananda and Srinivasa had made popular the
concept of Parkiya. However the reason for
this doctrine seem to be not so much to exalt the (vyabhichara)
as to show that really the Para (or God or
Krisna as the adulterous dramatization in most cases
leads to the degeneration and transcendent not as
the avtara) is the Self (one’s own atman
or antaratma) and the love of man or woman is
in fact metaphysically a vyabhichara staying
unless the Divine Para is accepted as the
real counterpart of the soul, Whereas the so-called
Parakiya is indeed svakiya¾
the sadachara. However dramatization in most
cases leads to degeneration and alamkaric use
of the Divine concept leads to perversion. The
saintlies celebates however avoided this pitfall
which lesser men have failed to avoid.

To conclude the parakiya doctrine meant the
doctrine of belonging of oneself to another as in
the case of a girl and bride, and in the case of the
soul. Just as the soul is to be returned to the
Divine Inner Ruler Immortal by the mind so too the
parent of guardian should return the girl to her
husband.

The metaphysical
relationship between the soul and its Lord is shown
to demand the return of the soul to God. Considered
as such the ‘return’ (nivritti) is the
natural relationship whereas the straying away from
one’s Lord is (pravritti or vyabhichara.)

The parakiya doctrine
was expertly used by the Mystics for the purpose of
sublimating carnal love. Their yearning for God was
clothed in sexual symbology in order to help
transforming the same into one of divine love ¾atma-kama or divyakama. But its use is
extremely governed by restraint of all lower
impulses and carnal suggestions. The Rasa-krida
of the Bhagavata is a very symbolic and in reality
an ontological depth can only be appreciated by
those who have loved God and in a supreme
transcendental way. It is the transmutation of human
nature in terms of divine relationship that is the
essence of this science of divya-sringara.

It is hazardous to
practice this for its emanations are very much
difficult to control except under except guidance.
Sri Chaitanya therefore recognized its value no less
than its dangers but he had shown in his own life
how it is to be practiced with saintliness and
chastity.

Kalidasa however it
may be stated hinted the practice of this
parakiya in his triology of dramas¾by
inventing the ‘Other’ woman† in
the triple forms of Mala vika: Sakuntala and Urvasi.
But there is hardly the real transformation effected
though Kalidasa felt that the higher the stature and
nature of the ‘Other’ woman the more profoundly
transformative of the male is She. But this almost
inverts the male psychology and provides the
efficacy of the female principle which is also
conceived as the Ultimate Divine. This does not
provide for the sringara motif or rasa
but it is sometimes held to be possible and
permissible.

The evolutionary theory of life has been able to
trace the growth of mind in three well-defined
stages: the tribal or mythopoetic, the logical and
the present realistic. The tribal horizon of man was
deeply concerned with the magical and religious
means or action for averting harm, or securing the
benefits of power. It was conscious of the inherent
but inscrutable power behind nature; and though
vaguely conscious of its universal presence in all
Natural objects, it was definitely ‘concretistic,’
and particularistic, and its highest flights of
imaginative fancy were definitely expressed by
mimesis and dramatization. It did not use
abstractions. But the transition to the logical
phase was developed even during the mythological
phase because the fundamental expression of even the
mythical demands a profound understanding of
symbolism and its distinctive patterns of
correlation with things. Though the symbolical
pursuit was strictly confined to the interpretation
and even to the building up of myths, it made for
the liberation of mind from the confines of the
purely sensory experience, and ‘fear’ of Nature.

The transition from the mythological age to the
logical age was in one sense the tradition from the
sensory and emotional reaction to Nature and tribal
society to the intellectual and impersonal reactions
to the self-same Nature. This transition in the
history of the human race was achieved generally
gradually due to the growth of reflection on the
phenomena of life. But as Prof. John Murphy stated
we find that the tribal was succeeded by the
revolutionary prophetic horizon, about B.C. 4000.
This was helpful in making man the master of nature
in respect of his food and general wants. Closely
following prophetic horizon, the logical mind
‘intolerant of contradiction within itself and
making no compromises with untruth in any sphere
‘initiated the modern’ epoch. Nature was de-peopled
of its gods and all the sense of awe and the
‘numinous’ and inscrutable were removed from it. The
dethronement of the ‘idols of the crowd’ was
followed by a return to actual experience available
to man. Conceptual thought or abstraction from a
host of concrete instances led to the formation of
concepts of Matter, Space, Time, Change, and
permanence; and even concepts pertaining to the
sphere of ethics such as justice, truth, goodness
and other values came into being. Thus the first
philosophers of India, Greece, and China were
materialists. This interpretation of Nature was from
a purely secularised and antisupernaturalistic
causal explanation. The mythologists of course had
their own ways of explaining causally but it was not
impersonal, formal truth or scientific. Causal
explanation, which is the clearest indication of the
activity of the intellect, was made to rest not on
the whims and fancies of the unknown spirits or
Chance, but on the discovery of laws that governs
the relations between things, laws that exhibit
necessary connections between things. It is
essentially relational ; it unites the disparate or
manifold things of nature. It is predictable or
deduceable-relationship that intellect or reason
demands. Further it also sought the One Unitary
reality, substance, system, Absolute, from which all
things, all types of relationships and
multiplicities could be shown to be deducible.
Polytheism yielded place to monism through the
monotheism of the prophetic intuition. In due
course, the discovery of the unitary substance led
to the affirmation of the nature of the ultimate
category of existence as Reason or Idea.
Mathematical accuracy and self-evidence of axioms
became the ideal of knowledge. The structure of
reality was made more and more to conform to the
ideal of necessity in thought, and much time was
taken to define the terms of thought. And laws were
discovered in almost every sphere of life, morals
and politics, and art and psychology. But this
experiment with Nature with the help of intellect or
reason was not successful all at once. But the step
was taken, the irrevocable step towards the
liberation of mind from the bondage of myths and
superstitious veneration and blindness. Clarity of
intellect, the precise perception of interrelations
between facts based on the absolutely verifiable
necessary laws was firmly established. Though the
intellect was made to depend upon sensory
experiences, it was not made to become subordinate
either to their content or to their demands.
Intellect conferred order on the chaos, and granted
permanence to the transitory. Indeed at a most
critical period in the history of modern thought
when empiricism and rationalism were competing with
each other, it was pointed out by Kant that it was
thought or mind that imposed order on sensory data,
and not that thought was discovering order in the
sensory data. Mind gave order. Indeed without Mind
Nature could not exist at all. The discovery of this
magnitude was rendered possible by the fact that man
began to discover that without a seeing mind or seer
there is nothing seen, and all that is seen is
indeed dependence on the mind of matter or the
phenomenal universe ultimately resulted in a demand
for a new approach to the problem of metaphysical
truth. Whether we could even make any distinctions
between the primary sensations like touch and the
secondary sensations like colour, smell, and taste,
was a question of great importance and it was held
that since both of them were sensations dependent
upon the seer or mind, they too must be referred to
the activity of the mind itself. But thought or
reason was not content with this declaration of the
omnivorousness of mind. Esse est percipi (to
exist is to be perceived) was too patently
unacceptable to the ordinary man, but it was too
irrefutable to be challenged. It was clear then to
both the empiricists and the rationalists that a new
methodology of thought was necessary. A new logic
was essential. Consciousness was to be defined in a
somewhat different way. It was dynamic ; it was
universal as reason. Its higher form rested on the
dynamic activity of its two-fold activity as Nature
on the one hand and as Mind that confers or
discovers or exhibits the unity and system in the
manifold or multiplicity of Nature on the other
hand. The goal of this process of development or
evolution of thought was the realisation of the
Ideal or Absolute that was working in and through
the differences, It was the identity in Nature as
well as in Mind, that is leading towards the rich
and concrete System or Reality. Indeed the process
of the explication of the identity in and through
the multiplicity gave mind an objective reality as
it operated by a process of dialectical opposition,
between being and non-being leading to the synthesis
of becoming. This dialectical process being a
logical process was necessary as the basis of the
reality and realisation of the Absolute. This
Absolute is ideally and necessarily present in all
the stages and epochs of development. Any philosophy
of Nature ultimately is the reality of the Absolute,
and History is also governed by the dialectical
process. The State is the visible manifestation of
the Absolute on the plane of society. But then it
was a type of philosophy that left things very much
in the same state as before. The theory that reality
or the Absolute operates as a unity in opposition or
in and through opposition was fruitful in giving
dynamic content to the Absolute’s self-impelling
and self-manifesting quality. The logical mind thus,
while saving itself from the inanities of static
conceptuality, emerged as the one all-embracing
statement of the nature of Reality that is
inner-connected in a coherent and non-self
contradictory manner and is a unity, universe,
identity. It was described as organic too in its
structure in the sense that none of its parts could
have reality apart from it. The logical mind left
nothing to chance; all chance was ignorance,
irrational. The business of the logical mind is to
extend the frontiers of knowledge and bring all
irrationality into the sphere of knowledge by
transforming it into elements of rational knowledge.

This process meant a complete abstractification of
reality, though it was pointed out that the Absolute
was more concrete with meaning than the sensory
experiences which were only concrete in the sense of
being sensible, but otherwise dumb, inchoate; yet
the logical intellect only gave concepts or the
conceptual world. The two aspects of logical
thought, one in the direction of the discovery of
the laws of Nature, uniformities and identities in
the behaviour patterns of phenomena, psychical and
physical, and the other in the direction of evolving
a system or universal order based on the principles
of non self-contradiction, have facilitated the
simultaneous growth of the logical mind. Today we
have in the apparent opposition of empirical and
positive sciences with their realistic trends, to
the absolutistic, abstractionistic and idealistic
constructions a full picture of the path traversed
by the logical intellect, the path of affirming
unity in opposition, of identity in difference. This
has been the guiding pattern of the intellect or
logical reason.

I
have so far sketched very briefly the development of
the logical mind in the West leaving out the string
of names that have made its developments possible.
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Des
Cartes, Spinoza, Berkely, Kant and Hegel have all
had the honour of contributing to the building up of
the logical mind. The names are unimportant but the
tendency has been continuously at work during the
past two thousand years and more.

The development of logical thought in the East ran
on parallel lines. Buddha’s logical method,
anticipated though it was considerably by the
Upanishadic meditations, was utilised for the
purpose of emancipation. His break away from the
Vedic thought was due to a variety of reasons, the
primary reason being of course the need to
understand all process with the aid of the
omnipotent causal principle. The Brhaspati school of
materialism was also the first scientifically
directed effort to lay down the instrument of
knowledge as perception. The Schools of Kanada and
Gautama depended upon logical thought of unravelling
the mystery of the constitution of matter and
relations. So also the Samkhyan school of Kapila
undertook the investigation into the psycho-physical
relationship between Matter and Mind, Subject and
Object. The supremacy of the subject over the object
was firmly established by Kapila. Buddhist thought
developed almost parallelly the representationalist,
solipsist and nihilstic schools. In all the above
schools it could be found that authority was
scarcely indented upon for the proof of the nature
of the world. The atheistic trend was emphasized by
some of these more than the others, their atheism
consisting mainly in the disregard for the sacred
revelational authority qua authority. The
Mimamsa schools which came into being to lay down
the principles of canonical interpretation in
respect of Vedic directions and prohibitions were
able to lay excellent fundamental principles of
deduction. In the direction of Sciences, Alchemy,
the father of modern chemistry, was studied.
Ayurveda was built up; great engineering efforts
were undertaken. We have silpa-sastra,
ganita-sastra, gola-sastra and other sciences.
Indeed the rules laid down in these sciences are
even today considered to be excellent principles and
valuable. The Vedanta sought to explain the whole of
reality on the basis of Upanishadic thought which
very early in the history of Indian Philosophy
released itself from the bondage to the natural and
the supernatural mythology of the Vedic-Brahmanic
horizon. But here we find a departure from the
tradition of Western development Instead of becoming
realistic, it has tended to become alogical; logical
thought now initiated the process of transcendence.
Unlike Buddhistic thought and Jainism, it sought to
explain the place of nature and the supernatural and
the logical in the integral structure of
supralogical experience. Logical thought sandwiched
between the two limits of concrete private
experience and concrete universal absolute or Divine
experience, had sought to systematise these in the
unity of its canons and principles. Confronted with
the disclosures of a higher experience than the
perceptual, it had to transcend its own earlier
preoccupation with the perceptual and immitigably
private experiences with which it had dealt with
considerable success, in order to evolve systematic
knowledge. By this inevitably necessary adaptation
or orientation of itself it had paved the way for
the mergence or manifestation of the supralogical
concrete, universal, transcendent Intuition. The
mind was prepared by Vedanta for the third step of
the evolutionary transformation by the mystical
disclosures of the Universal Consciousness
(supramental Saccidanada), which more completely
than even the logical consciousness conforms to the
pattern of Unity in and through Multiplicity which
exceeds and transforms the logical unity in
opposition.

Thus the Mind has for the past three thousand years
been passing through the logical phase. Roughly
these three thousand years have led to the emergence
of mind from its primitive phase to the state of
abstract thinking in terms of the universal values
of truth, beauty, goodness and others. But thanks to
the emergence of great figures of religion, the
third phase had not been lagging far behind. For
mind is a unity seeking an integral manifestation of
itself in its triple being as mythological, logical
and supralogical Experience. In the realisation of
the definite pattern of the higher and integral
consciousness consists the possibility of the
survival of Mankind.

4.6 STUDIES IN SAMKHYAN PHILOSOPHY

I Samkhyan Theory of
Knowledge

1. The most important problem of any school of
thought is the problem of how and by what means one
knows. Four important factors are involved in any
act of knowing: (i) the subject who knows or wills
to know and who gains knowledge for himself (ii) the
object of knowledge, which may be other than oneself
or even oneself; and (iii) the means of knowing -
the consciousness of the self which relates the
subject with the object and brings the knowledge of
the object to the subject and lastly (iv) the
knowledge of object. There is lot of confusion in
the minds of many who equate the third and the
fourth but it is clear that there is difference
between the content of knowing and the act of
knowing.

2. Knowing is an all-comprehensive term that can
be visualised or recognized as (i) direct - the
subject without the mediation of the sense-organs or
other organs of intellect can know the object. But
this kind of knowing is possible only when there is
the subject as consciousness. However this
consciousness is different from or the original of
the consciousness that we have when we perceive any
sensory object through the senses. Indeed to most
people consciousness itself is a resultant of
sensory or other stimulations (internal or
external): so much so one school of thought has
affirmed that the soul is subject only when its
sense-organs or motor organs are stimulated by
objects. This view of course is materialistic but it
stems from the real distinction between the
consciousness that is supersensory and the
consciousness that is sensory and vital: thought it
is the same consciousness in so far as knowing is
concerned the contents that it brings forth are
different in kind. If consciousness then is the
instrument of knowing it is seen that the subject of
this activity of consciousness is also in a sense
the source and ground of consciousness and remains
both the subject and means. However it is clear that
whatever may be the nature of the soul, it is only
when it is subject that its consciousness functions
as knowing and brings knowledge of objects. The
question is whether the soul when not subject(when
it is no longer knowing the object, prakrti)
is conscious or not. Samkhya here says that in this
condition the soul is having itself as object and
thus the object and subject become one and knowing
is knowing oneself - the object-subject identity in
self-consciousness is different from the
object-subject difference in external knowing and
knowledge. The attempt to claim that in
self-consciousness the subject and object disappear
is of course to affirm consciousness as the stuff of
both subject and object and is an ontological
extension. Samkhya does not go to this point. It
recognizes that the soul is consciousness because it
has consciousness and the identity between the two
is clear, though its own explanation of knowing
entails that the consciousness itself is objectified
in knowing the object, and the subject though
knowing is not so objectified.

The Object known is known through three ways: if it
is the Subject it is only known through
Aptavachana or svanubhava: for the
subject (soul) is not either a cause or an effect.
Objects are either causes or effects or both causes
and effects. This general assumption colours the
division of the pramanas: the Cause is known
through inference or reasoning from effects the
effects are known through perception or observation.
The effects for the most part are the elements of
nature (bhautika) and the sensory and motor
organs. Even manas is known through
observation or introspection but in relation to its
causes. The basic knowing then is closely linked up
with the causal theory in so far as objects are
concerned. It is true that whilst generally causes
can only be known through inference (sesavat
anumana) it is also possible to arrive at the
Cause through a direct awareness. But of this there
is no mention. Speaking about the characteristics of
Buddhi, it is stated that it is jnana,
dharma, vairagya and isatva.
The cognitive point is clearly jnana or
knowledge rather than an activity of consciousness
or knowing when conceived not as an activity or
instrument of activity, since activity is equated
with causality.

The whole apparatus of Prakrti is intended to
be instrumental to knowing or acquiring knowledge
and for the preservation of knowledge: for
inspection rather than itself being knowing.

The conception of causality will explain why it must
be that knowing and knowledge are indeed
differentiated and the one is put on the object side
and the other on the subject.

Usually there are recognized there kinds of causes:
the material (upadana or samavaya),
the efficient (nimitta) and the instrumental
(asamavaya) and a fourth is recognized as the
prayojana (final cause of Aristotle), the
purpose of the creation or effectuation. In
Samkhya we can clearly recognize that the
material cause is Prakrit, the nimitta
cause is the nearness (Sannidhya or
samyoga) of the Purusa, and the purusa
is not involved in the cause nor in the effect but
has to be near for the creative evolution to take
place, the instrumental causes are the karanas,
buddhi, ahamkara, tanmatras
which are at once made up of prakrti but are
not present in the effects except in so far as they
are made up of by the prakriti of three
gunas. This point of course is to be considered
seriously on the parallel of the naiyayika
version where only the material cause is present all
through, but not the instruments like stick, wheel
and so on, or the Godhead or carpenter or potter who
are the efficient cause. The final cause or
prayojana is patently the enjoyment of the soul
or use or utility.

If knowing is said to be a kind of causality then
there is serious difficulty, in respect of the
involvement of subject in knowing. Even sannidhya
is a kind of causality but it is not immanent
causality or satkarayavada. It is
asat-karyavada if we have to say it, the effect
is not in the cause (immanently) but it is causality
in the sense of being necessary for the process of
creativity to take place.

3. Another important point we have to consider is
whether we should not make a distinction between
having and knowing: We have knowledge but we know
the object: the knowing gets the knowledge of the
object but is not itself knowledge:

Ancient psychologists did have this distinction in
mind when they distinguished between cit and
jnana. Cit is the consciousness and is
knowing whereas jnana is the having of the
form of the object or artha-jnana. Thus
whilst Brahma is called Sat cit ananda it is
something different from Satyam jnanam anantam
Brahma. The Samakhyan attributes jnana to
buddhi and not to the purusa and as
such jnana cannot be the attribute of the
purusa. That it can be knowing cit rather
than having knowledge is clear. If this view is
accepted then it follows that the purusa is
not having jnana form the beginning, except
in the case of Isvara or Kapila the founder
and those souls or persons perfect form the very
beginning, but gain this knowledge. Thus it is clear
that only souls which have cit but not
jnana or ajnanis who fall under the spell
of prakrti and her evolution, and their
engagement in the perceiving or seeing or witnessing
of the drama of prakrti results in its
getting rid of ajnana and attaining jnana.
Thus we see that the souls have to be of three
kinds, the ever-free Kapila like or Isvara, and the
freed souls who have gone through the witnessing of
the drama, and ajnanis. Thus we find it is
stated in the Upanisads - isaanisaujnaajnau -
the lord and not lord, the knowledge possessing one
and ignorant (non-knowledge ajnana). This is
consequent on the very process of describing the
founder and the freed ones, his disciples, Jnana
then is something that arises from the experience:
it is perhaps therefore a derivative of Ö­
ja: to be born. Knowledge is a growth in and through
experience and it is that which abolishes the
ignorance which is the condition of non-knowledge.
That is why we pass from ajnana to jnana
- though ajnana is usually equated with works
like avidya it is clear that our knowing is a
doing - an activity and vidya arises as a
consequence of knowing.

The Purusa is thus characterised by
jnatrtva: knowing capacity and activity, and
bhoktrtva: enjoying capacity or activity which
are described as saksitva : witnessing the
drama. But activity is the most important thing –
for it is that which reveals the necessity for
iksatva: desire to know, to perceive, to observe
the objective world. Kartrtva or activity is
precisely what is involved in the two other modes of
consciousness or cit, and all the three lead
to jnana or its arising. But kartrtva
is omitted from the functions of Purusa and
referred to prakrti. The reason is not far to
seek, it arises from the postulate again of
satkarya vada: the cause must contain the
effect: the final knowledge must already be present
in the cause – kartriva or karta – and
the result is that one is jnani from the very
beginning and never an ajnani – and threrfore
liberated from the very beginning. The prakritic
drama is either a lila for itself or not
existent at all. Non-creationism ajatavada
alone can result. Gaudapada or Vaisnavism will
result with a difference that Vaishnavism considers
that it is the play of the Divine for the Divine by
the Divine who is the Master of Prakrti and
its self.

The postulate of inactivity (passivity) and activity
respectively in respect of Purusa and
Prakriti is open to serious objections. Indeed
almost all the Vedantas seem to assume that
to be conscious or is cit to be passive
rather than active. This original assumption brings
about the divorce between the theoretical and the
practical: vidya and avidaya – when
the former is assumed to be the passive realisation
of the Self and the latter an activity that takes
one away from Self. But activity need not be
directed outside oneself – and then it might be
called caitanyata rather than jnana –
and the externalised activity might well be called
jnana that is arrived at through activity.
This postulate of contradiction between vidya
and avidya or theoretical knowledge and
practical activity has been accepted without
question by most samkhyan exponents. However this is
manifestly wrong: for jnana develops out of
karma or action and that is clear even in
this system. The Buddhi in its tamasic aspect
is said to have the attributes of viparyaya
(delusion, illusions etc., adhyasa too
perhaps of the AdvaitaVedanta),
disability, contentment which are obviously the
first fruits of contact between the Purusa
and the Prakrti, that leads the soul downward
into involvement and enjoyment through the wondrous
powers revealed by prakrti. But it is indeed
this anubhava of its depths that leads to
knowledge which releases the soul from its
identification(akhyati). Thus in respect of
bond souls it follows that activity of
identification is a kind of jnatrtva that
leads through suffering to knowledge ultimately. The
pravrtti is followed up by nivrtti – a
descent is followed up by an ascent. The claim made
by some that one must have experience of evil so
that one can discern the good and conversely that
nothing is good which is not known and chosen as
such and evil therefore is fully to be known and
guarded against is clearly on the postulate that
total knowledge included both the descent into evil
and ascent towards the Good. But then whilst it is
inevitable, in a sense it is something that has to
be known from a seer who knows the totality of the
process of Good and the evil; the former is valuable
and the latter unworthy. Therefore the teachers of
wisdom comprehending both the paths – the
devayana and the asuryana – taught the
blind seekers of pleasure in the downward and
external path that the Good is to be chosen – and
the good is that which will set one free from
suffering and darkness – the tamasa and
andhatamisra, the moha and the
mahamoha and the tamas that are the five
forms of error (viparyaya).

Thus knowing is an activity, it may be external and
that leads to identification with object when it
tries to bring the knowledge (jnanakara –
ideas) of the object to the subject. This may be
wrong –for they are not the self at all. This may
lead to activity(karma) and kalpana
imagination and active participation. Ahamkara
is this stage of involvement and identification. But
to separate the theoretical from the practical
activity is to make the very process of knowledge;
and the arising of knowledge from activity
impossible.

The Upanisad rightly has stressed that avidya
or activity (karma)leads to darkness, but
knowledge can also lead to greater darkness as it
were. Therefore knowing this that though the results
of activity are one thing and that of knowledge
another, one should practice both of them, so that
one result of all activity, conquest over death as
also attain the immortal. Death being the result of
all activity, conquest over death would mean to know
how of the process of descent and the ascent through
perfect acquaintance of the Nature, and thus gain
the state of being utterly free from its effect and
delusive possibilities (viparyaya). (of
Isavasyopanisad).

Activity (kartrtva) alone cannot be relegated
to Prakrti whilst retaining jnatrtva
and bhoktrtva to the purusa.
Theoretical activity is as much activity as
enjoyment also is an activity. The Purusa
thus is impoverished but that is because it was felt
that activity is always involvement and
disinvolvement is what is aimed at in Moksa.
The path of reflection and renunciation being
negative activity it may be considered that that it
is contrary to outward activity. Samkhya however is
assuming that every effect must be found in the
cause, and since activity is of the nature of causal
activity it must already possess potentially the
effect. This postulate of sat-karya-vada
vitiates its whole conception of knowing, knowledge,
activity and enjoyability.

Thus the theory of knowledge of Samkhya suffers from
causal presupposition and the process of knowing and
knowledge are confused and riddled with
contradictions.

We have discussed about the nature of the knower.
Turning to the nature and process of knowing it must
be clear that there are at least four ways for
knowing:

(i) The direct knowing by the Purusa which
arises at the last when it is capable of saying ‘I
know prakrti.’ This is not mediated even by
Buddhi for this is also discarded at that
stage being a material instrument (karana).

(ii) The kind of knowing that arises when the
purusa perceives the modifications of prakrti
through its first evolute buddhi. Buddhi
is said to be the instrument of knowing and the
cause of anubhava of prakrti. Nyaya
too considers that buddhi is the karana
for anubhava and describes that it is capable
of being our source of knowledge. Buddhi
alone can be used to perceive but such a knowledge
can fall into either intellectual knowledge which is
non-sensory or of the form of reasoning based on
the sensory (anumana). Sabda obviously
does not fall into this category.

(iii) The knowing that happens through the
mediation of manas is sometimes said to be a
kind of manasa-pratyaksa different from
indriyagrahya jnana which is sensory knowledge.

(iv) The sensory knowing which is had through the
mediating of the sense organs. These can be
considered to be four levels of knowing:-

(i) Caitya arising from cit of the
Purusa.

(ii) Buddhigrahya

(iii) Manograhya

(iv) Indriyagrahya

It must be remembered that all are involved in the
fourth kind of knowing: three involved in the third,
two involved in the second and only one in the
first. Thus the purusa knows through
buddhi, manas and indriyas in
indriyagrahya jnana. It is clear that the higher
types of objects cannot be known by and through the
lower. Sense-organs cannot grasp objects relevant to
buddhi or manas, though manas
and buddhi can grasp the object of the
senses. Further the knowledge got through them may
be considered to be truer but of this there is no
mention. However the falsity of a thing is rendered
possible when there are too many intermediary
instruments.

We have omitted one karana namely ahamkara-
there is a kind of knowledge that is got from and
through ahamkara-
which is more like ‘doing’ rather than passive
knowing though there is hardly a doctrine of passive
knowing in Samkhya (&Nyaya). The
individuative principle of ahamkara isolates
the knowledge as personal and particular and unique.
(Ahamkara is the cause of individuation into
atomic particles in tanamatra). It is said to
be perceived only in yogajanya jnana or
manasa-pratyaksa. Ahamkara has kalpana
or imagination as function or that which is divisive
consciousness or knowledge.

Thus the instruments which help knowing are
buddhi, ahamkara, manas and
indriyas. These give mediate knowledge of
jnana. The faults of the instruments will infect
the nature of knowledge granted, by them. The object
knowledge becomes erroneous due to faults of the
instruments.

Samkhya
does not mention except broadly about Nature
Pakrti. It has three qualities, gunas,
that it is inconscient, acit, that it is in a
state of avyakta and becomes vyakta
owing to the disturbance of the state of equilibrium
by the sannidhya or nearness of Purusa.
The Samkhyan knowledge is true when it is found that
buddhi is disinterested (vairagya),
and capable and can lead to dharma or right
conduct.¹ Thus if the Buddhi is satvika
knowledge will be true and capable and good,
otherwise knowledge will be delusive, incapable and
leading to wrong conduct. Thus much weight is
attached to the quality of the buddhi, and
ipso facto of the ahamkara and manas
and the indriyas which have all to get
purified by the sattva-Buddhi. That knowledge
that originates in attachment and delusion is
incapable and wrong.

The true knowledge of the nature of Prakrti
and its modifications or objects in possible only
when the karanas are purified. Thus
Samkhya insists upon the purity of the knowing
process and the instruments used by the knower. If
the knower is ignorant and pursues nature in
a spirit of thirst for experience without
understanding (trsna) and wonder-curiosity,
then prakrti cannot be properly understood.
There is for Samkhya no theory of illusion as
such as illusions arise from the nature of the
buddhi itself. However it is due also to the
ajna nature of the conscient (cit)
purusa.

The theory of akhyati or non-observation is
usually claimed to be the explanation of illusion or
delusion in Samkhya. It is not however
evident in the Karikas. It is true that the
Purusa tends to identify itself with the
activities of the prakritic gunas and
modifications. This identification or acceptance of
the activities of prakrti as belonging to oneself or
as one’s own may be the cause of illusion for it is
attachment to or interest in it. The kartrtva
of the Purusha which is cognitive is
different from the kartrtva of the
modifications of prakrti which are karanas
or instruments at best. The owning of
instrumentality and thinking that the errors and
disabilities of them is one’s own is the cause of
sorrow for the soul. The non-observation of the
distinctness of one’s self from prakrti may
be the cause of delusion or error. But more
correctly we are not to think of the akhyati
in respect of the self and prakrti but in
respect of objects in perception as such. And if
viparyaya, error due to moha, tamisra
and tamas etc., are the causes they lead to
anyathakhyati rather than to akhyati.

The cause of illusion is always due to a superficial
similarity in the objects and not the similarity
between the kartrtva of the Purusa and
the activity of gunas. All similarity that
leads to illusion is based upon non-observation when
simple but mal-observation when complicated by
trsna, fear etc., The objects would be similar,
so much so delusion regarding them, that is
mistaking one for the other, is always possible. The
theory that holds akhyati seeks to solve the
problem of error by recourse to mere jnana or
knowledge, whereas it considers that
anyathakhyati will demand practical verification
of the doubt arising in the mind about a thing as
different from what it is. However verification of
the hypothesis, first assumption, happens sooner or
later. The question is whether knowledge is merely
passive or active: and knowledge which can remove a
delusion, and bring about the withdrawal of prakrtic
activities must be dynamic rather than passive
sentience. However it is clear that akhyati
is not mentioned as the cause of error or falsity or
unreality of objects previewed in Pratyaksa.

There is need to assume the distinctions between
cit and citta. Cit is the substantive
nature of the Purusa. Citta is the
functional inseparable attribute of purusa.
Citta can undergo expansion and contraction
but not cit for it remains unaffected in
essence. This concept of substantive-attributive
relationship between cit and citta is
clearly envisaged in Patanjali’s declaration that
union is arrived at through the control of the
modifications of citta –citta-vrtti-nirodha
–a control that brings it to itself or its substrate
– Cit. This is clearly seen in the
development that Ramanuja made - when he called cit
as dharmi-bhuta-jnana and citta as
dharma-bhuta-jnana. Here the substitution of
jnana in the place of cit is undoubtedly
ambiguous for jnana is always knowledge that
arises whereas cit is the inherent nature
which makes knowledge possible. The contraction of
the dharma-bhuta-jnana or its contracted
state is the state of ignorance, but its fullest
state is the state of freedom. In other words it
does not identify itself with the modifications of
prakrti or its karanas. The Upanisads
however have used both words synonymously.

II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SAMKHYA.tc "II. THE
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SAMKHYA."

What is the psyche with which we are concerned in
Samkhya? This is naturally the Purusa or
Person.² Usually it is said that this term
refers to the indwelling soul in a body – an
embodied being. However this does not appear to be
the original meaning in so far as the soul or
purusa is considered to be independent of and
having characteristics other than that of prakrti
or original cause of all manifest world. Prakrti
means cause in Samkhya, and this cause is
conceived as having three gunas, sattva, rajas
and tamas. Purusa takes interest in
prakrti or cause and the evolution vrttis,
arise. Corresponding to the changes or inequilibrium
in prakrti there happen changes in a sense in
purusa himself. The purusa is said to
have cognitivity (witnessing the cause saksitva),
it is also said to have enjoyability (bhoktrtva);
it has no kartrtva or power to do but it has
undoubtedly desire to see the manifestation
of the cause. This can be said to be conativity.
These three can be recognized as having a kind of
correspondence to the three qualities of sattva
(which illumines), rajas (that which moves
and manifests) and tamas (that which being at
rest gives enjoyability). The three modes of
consciousness of the purusa (citta-vrtti)
are exhibited through the three gunas of the
Cause, and thus the usual delusion or illusion that
the body is the soul arises.

These three characteristics enfold the entire
psychology of experience of Nature (prakrti).
Purusa is said to be a substance in so far as
it has pratyaktva (interior knowing or
awareness cit), but it has paraktva,
exteriority, also in so far as other purusas
and prakrti and its evolutes are concerned.
The self or soul cannot be known it is said in its
real nature except by aptavacana (words of
the attained persons who have gained the inner
knowledge or awareness of themselves). It cannot be
known from the observation of prakrti or even
its evolutes. This is because of the delusion that
the soul suffers from - thinking that it can
know itself by observing its transactions with
Nature. This is to treat the soul as part of Nature
and the study of Nature is concluded to be the study
of self or soul. Behaviorism is the result if not
materialism. If all the activities of the individual
soul are identified with the activities of the body
and the environment and the nature of the
soul is sought to be got at by observing the
behaviour of the several organs of the body, mind
ego and buddhi then there is only a
psycho-physical psychology not a pure psychology.

(i) The soul is said to be cit.
(consciousness or awareness). It is capable of
witnessing and enjoying Nature and it is said to be
a kind of efficient cause of Nature’s evolution by
its sannidhya (nearness).

(ii) The interest taken by the purusa in
witnessing prakrti is due to its original
ignorance (ajnana) because it is said that
even this nearness (sannidhya) cannot provoke
any pravrtti, evolution, on the part of the
prakrti, when the soul becomes fully aware of
all the evolutes and formations of prakrti
and finds itself to be different from prakrti.
Cognitive, volitive and affective curiosity is what
stirs prakrti and makes its triple gunas
which have been in equilibrated motion (sadrsa-vrtti)
into inequilibrated (visadrsa-vrtti) motions.

Ignorance ( as curiosity or lack of knowledge) of
prakrti is then the characteristic of the
purusa. But this means also that there are two
stages of the purusa, the ajnana stage
that leads to prakrtic evolution, and the
jnana stage that leads to prakrtic
involution. The jivas or purusas are
thus of at least two kinds, the liberated (jnani)
and the unliberated (ajnani).³ A third kind
of soul or purusa must also be accepted;
viz., the nitya mukta or eternally free like
the founder of the Samkhyan School, Sage Kapila.
This becomes plausible because he has never been
under the curiosity of Prakrti having known
all from the very beginning.

Another reason also may be adduced. It is not clear
whether one gets at the cognitive or affective or
conative mode of consciousness (cit) in any
regular order. Any one of these may predominate
funcitionally. The influence of these on
prakrti’s gunas equally is not clearly
envisaged. The Samkhya disjunction of Buddhi
into good (sattva-dominant) and bad (tamas-dominant)
shows that the purusa may by chance
get the good first and almost immediately get the
awakening without having to know prakrti in
its rajas and tamas aspect -
though for complete knowledge of prakrti (anubhava)
they too have to be known, but with the guidance of
the higher buddhi it is just possible that
this may be done almost immediately. Thus whilst it
is possible for one who starts with good buddhi
to end up in bad and then laboriously move up again,
it is equally possible for the bad buddhi to
go down and ascent to the Good (sattvika) and
attain liberation. The nisus in purusa is for
full knowledge of prakrti (jnana)
which is the liberating force. (Bhagavad Gita
mentions about the asura prakrti taking it
downward into darkness whilst daivi prakrti
takes it out of darkness and ascends towards light
sattva).

The analogy of the lame man and blind woman reveals
the characteristics of privation which brings about
their cooperative adventure in creation together.
Lame man means who cannot act, an ajnani, and
the other has no seeing capacity. Both are in a
sense ajna. But the purusa is cit
and prakrti is acit. The analogy
reveals that when the soul knows or becomes a
jnani it no longer needs prakrti for its
enjoyment or what ever that means. So too Prakrti
no longer needs the Purusa. In a sense both
of them attain divorce from one another after a long
eventful history of sorrow, joy or dualities.

The conclusion is that when the soul or purusa
withdraws its inherent interest or curiosity after
anubhava (prakrtic experience) it is
no longer seized with curiosity. Citta-vrtti
(modifications of functional consciousnesss) stops
or comes gradually to a halt. The continuance of the
association with prakrti is at the physical
or gross level alone and when at this level also it
fails then there is final liberation. These two
stages are known as jivan-mukti and
mahanirvana or videha-mukti, the second
is final (mahanirvana) the former is just
nirvana, in Buddhist terminology.

Thus if Citta-vrttis are our empirical modes
of consciousness, and these modes are in different
degrees present in each act of theirs, yet they are
also terminable, capable of supension. Unless we say
that waking, dreaming and deep sleep are states of
cognition, volition and affection or feeling,
respectively, we can see that the soul, cit,
is other than these three. This the Soul or cit
can be stated to be the fourth as in Mandukya, the
turya, which is the source or ground of the
three. They are citta and that is cit.
Sri Ramanuja makes the distinction between these two
in a luminous way; the soul is jnana-substantive,
(dharmi-bhuta-jnana) the modes of
consciousness are (dharma-bhuta-jnana)
jnana-functional; qualitative, or modal. It is
this modal consciousness that is known as
attributive consciousness also and it is this that
is available for introspection, not the substantive,
for it is basically the ground of all experiencing.
It is not capable of being the object of
consciousness or attributes as such, being that
which makes consciousness itself possible. The
dimensions of experiences of this substantive
consciousness, cit, are not given at all in
Samkhya. They have to be gleaned from the
Upanisads, if at all. There are of course three
views: (I) that thought or consciousness-function
expires in this introspective absorption (laya)
in the Self: (ii) other consider that soul or self
itself can perhaps inform the functional
consciousness about itself in some way in revelatory
terms; (iii) that this can be made to know the Self
by direct transcendental experience. The self is
always subject and never the object, according to
some, and as such self-knowledge means something
very different from knowledge of objects. But since
the Self is counselled in Vedanta as something to be
known, seen and entered into or known, thought about
and meditated upon, and lastly attained so as to
become It, there is to be assumed that it is in a
different sense an Object of man directly known by
the soul without the mediation of material organs –
buddhi, ahamkara, manas and the organs of
sense and action.

The question whether a purusa can exist apart
from any body is answered in the affirmative. In
liberation the purusa is isolated (kevala)
and it attains kaivalya mukti or liberation
of freedom form all bodies. Ordinary bond souls
continue to have some body or other. Thus they
firstly have a linga sarira starting with
buddhi, ahamkara, manas and the ten organs and
tanmantras. This develops the gross bodies
which are discarded and assumed according to desire
(kama-karma), till finally both the sthula(gross)
and linga (subtle) sariras (bodies)
are discarded. It is this liberation from
linga-sarira that is liberation really, for it
is the cause of the transmigrations of the purusa.

The liberated soul has no kind of prakrtic
body whatever nor can it acquire one.*

That is the reason why the incarnations of God are
not said to be of the order of prakrti at
all: they are divya, divine, luminous.
Samkhya is not concerned with the problems of
the Rsis or the liberated beings who
incarnate for the Good of all.

The necessity to explain the nature of prakrti
arises because of its being the source of bondage to
the purusa. To give the knowledge about its
evolutes or modifications is to help the crossing
over of ignorance. Ignorence leads to curiosity and
wonder and from it arises investigation or enjoyment
or both -anubhava. The ultimate attainment of jnana
means the end of the search or the loss of interest
arising out of viveka discrimination or
samkhya.

The psychology of the Samkhyan system is strictly
limited to the process by which the bondage to the
soul arises and the kinds of forces that help in the
process. It also points out forces which lead to the
loosening of the bonds also and finally the cycle of
education or anubhava is completed.

The souls are purusa, are really total
personalities when they have gone through the body
of prakrti and have mastered its knowledge.
In this sense the cit becomes a purusa
(purisa lord of the body or city of
nine-gates as they playfully say) or person and is
emancipated from ignorance of prakrti (triguni).

The nature of Buddhi is described in two ways its
sattvika aspect which enables it to attain
dharma, wisdom, dispassion and power. In
general, it is said to be of the nature of will (adhyavasaya).
Dharma, or virtue, leads one to attain higher
planes of life or enjoyment; jnana (which is in a
sense ambiguous word being used for the Purusa
himslef) is wisdom about Nature or Prakrti
that leads to beatitude of liberation; vairagya
or dispassion leads to that state when buddhi
gets absorbed into the avyakta that
annihilates it as linga-sarira that leads to
transmigration, and lastly power or aisvarya
which is described as granting the power of
laghima, anima, garima, mahima, vasitva, Isitva
and prapti. These mean mastery over the
elements of Nature as a whole. There is however
mention of the tamasic buddhi which produces
the contrary effects of sinfulness, ignorance,
attachment and asakti impotence, which lead to
dwelling in lower planes or worlds, bondge,
transmigrations and impediments in the body,
disability. Vacaspati Misra commits the serious
mistake of saying that aisvarya means
non-impediments to desires; it should be
non-impediments to freedom or control over the
entire nature and its modifications.

Speaking about the faults that arise, there is
mention of four kinds of faults - namely error (viparyaya),
disability and these two are surely what make
knowledge impossible. The wrong type of contentment
is said to be to be contented with attainments
restricted to buddhi; one should go to the
final liberation. Mere knowledge is not enough. Nor
should it be said that abstinence from eternal
objects of sense is a sort of contentment. Vacaspati
says that abstinence is due to difficulties in
earning, saving, wasting, enjoying and killing. One
is tempted to ask vacaspati Misra whether these can
be considered to be bad or wrong. Bhagavad Gita
definitely says that one could abstain from all
objects of sense and foods and taste. These of
course occur only when one attains the Param
or the Transcendent Godhead or here in Samkhya
are knowing the self as different from prakrti.

The explanation of siddhis in Samkhya
is unusual and it is said to be an interference to
Jnana, though it is suggested that it is not
so by Vacaspati Misra.

They are said to be Uha: guess or insight not
necessarily due to previous life remembrance. (2)
Sabda or apta-vacana oral instruction by
a great teacher, (3) adhyayana: study of
the Vedas in addition to hearing it, (4)
duhkhavighata, triumph over sorrow of the three
kinds, adhyatma, adhibhautika, and
adhidaivika, (5) Suhrtprapti: gaining of
a true friend or Guru and (6) danam or
charity which is purifying of the individual. The
siddhis are not like aisvarya with which
usually these are identified in the Yoga Sutras
but helps towards the jnana. These siddhis
or attainments are surely those indispensable help
or aids towards purification of oneself and one’s
entire adhara.

III. GOD AND SAMKHYA:tc "III. GOD AND SAMKHYA\:"

Samkhya
as it has come down to us in the Karikas does
not refer to God. But it does refer to some
attributes such as Isatva of Buddhi.
Istava would only mean that one is master of
the categories of prakrti and as such is
capable of enjoying them fully. Or it may mean that
the soul acquiring this purified satvika buddhi
is not deluded by the allurements which had
previously led it down the ladder of evolution
towards disability and contentment with ignorance
and one’s lot.

God as we know it is considered to be (1) the
creator of the entire universe and its sustainer and
destroyer too -
this is the definition given by the Vedanta
sutras I (1.2) God in the samkhyan system is
prakrti for it is that which evolves and
involves and supports the entire evolution of the
categories and diversifies itself. But God is not
only the creator and sustainer and destroyer, he is
also said to be the material and efficient cause of
the Universe. Surely the material cause of the world
is Prakrti in Samkhya. But as to
efficient causality it is rather doubtful though by
making it active or rather changing thanks to its
triple gunas is an attempt to grant efficient
causality of a kind to prakrti. The real
efficient causality in Samkhya is the
nearness (sannidhya samyoga) of an ignorant (ajna)
purusa to prakrti. We have to insist on the
purusa being ajna (ignorant) because
the jna purusa will not take interest in the
play and evolutionary lila or drama of
prakrti. The jnani is one who declares,
“I have seen the prakrti,” and at that
movement prakrti also withdraws from all activity
and arrives at its own avyakta state (laya)
saying “I have been seen.” Thus ajna purusa
is the causa efficience of the prakrtic evolution.
The God is thus either an acit prakrti or an
ajna purusa and the need for the Brahman
of the Vedanta or isvara is out of
place. However our usual definition of god as
omnipotent and omniscient Creator and destroyer of
the Universe has no relevance in Samkhya.
There can hardly be the process if such a God
exists. Nor can he be proved at all. The Samkhyan
system thus cannot find any way by which it could
prove from the existence of prakrti or the
purusa as a bond soul the existence of
Omniscient Creator etc., God.

However the existence of Kapila, the all-knowing
Teacher, gives some scope for exploring the nature
of God, as the Teacher the original Purusa
who knowing all about Prakrti, a perfect
jnani, out of compassion for the souls (ajnas)
teaches them the path out of the duality of
sukha-duhka (pleasure and pain) and others and
makes them emancipate themselves by knowing the
nature of Prakrti and of themselves. This
adi-purusa-jnani is the Isvara who
redeems, all souls out of infinite compassion. He
being unaffected by prakrti is also one whose
very nearness to all prakrti will extinguish
the activities of prakrti in all its forms.
His very presence near a soul will entail
extinguishment of all processes in respect of that
soul.

Prakrti
begins to withdraw from such souls which have come
into contact with the Jnani-Isvara. The
experience of peace in the company of the Guru
Jnani is about the first intimation that
vairagya is developing in the Buddhi, and it
leads to jnana, and dharma. Prakrti by
itself may take the whole cycle of
creation-sustention-destruction or the
evolution-involution cycle called samsara (janana-marana-cycle
being included in the large cycle of Nature) and the
freedom of the purusa from prakrtic bonds may
be inevitable at the general pralaya. The
dependence on prakrti to bring about
salvation or emancipation is undoubtedly the
materialistic approach. But it is something that may
not entail the attainment of jnana as such.
Jnana is essentially the knowledge that
arises in and through anubhava or experience
of all sorrow in respect of material creation. But
there are inevitably many souls and in different
stages of ascent and descent and the cosmic
Prakrti moves at its own pace.

The assumption of plurality of souls is empirical
and the seeking for liberation is individual and God
is sought as guide and helper on the path of ascent
and out of prakrti. He is the ready means for
salvation or liberation, for being ever perfect and
compassionate God as Teacher has taught and
instructed and helped every soul that has turned
towards him. The freed souls in turn have also
become teachers on the path. Thus Kapila -
the Isvara- trained
Pancasikha, Asuri, Isvara krsna and other freed
souls - who have become
gurus on the path. Kapila therefore is
regarded as the avatar of God in theistic
Samkhya. The difference between Buddha and
Kapila lies in the fact Buddha claimed to achieve
the Buddhic liberation by his own efforts without
the help of any adi-guru or sub-guru. Herein
lies the difference between the Isvara of
Theistic Samkhya and Buddha. Patanjali
Darsana accepts Isvara as Adi guru; the
nitya mukta Godhead. Thus it counsels that
devotion to Isvara is necessary for liberation in
the shortest possible time. This is again perhaps
the meaning of the Samkhya karika that speaks
about one of the siddhis as getting good
company -satsangha-
a good teacher to teach is a siddhi.

Thus whilst Samkhya is said to be atheistic
it is only in the sense of denying a creator etc.,
God or efficient cause God, but not a God who is the
teacher of the Highest path to liberation, the
Primal Jnani who knows all prakrti and
perhaps of all souls and their nature so that he
could led them to the Ultimate condition of freedom,
moksa. About atma-jnana or nature of
the soul as such in itself Samkhya hardly
speaks. Obviously it belongs to another discipline,
the Vedanta.

IV. ANALOGIES IN THE SAMKHYA.tc "IV. ANALOGIES IN
THE SAMKHYA."

Though upamana
is included under anumana or omitted in
Samkhya, this System utilises graphic similies
to bring home its point. In fact it goes much
farther than illumination or illustration, they tend
even to become something like proofs -
self-evident assertions.

The similies are
analogies used are:

I. The action of the gunas are such as they
are unified in their action: Karika 13 saya “Their
action like a lamp is for a single purpose.” cf.
Karika 36: external organs.

II. The Union of Purusa and Prakrti
“takes place like that of the lame and the blind
“(Kar. 21).

III. Karika 41 states that linga (buddhi
etc.) does not subsist without a particular body – ”
as a painting stands not without a ground, nor a
shadow without a stake.” This analogy somehow
appears to be an inversion. The gross body subsists
or is supported by linga as cause according
to this system, though the gross body appears to
support the linga. The analolgy almost
suggests that the effect supports the gross mind
surely.

IV. Karika 57 speaks about the unconscious teleolgy
of prakrti “ As the insentient milk flows out
for the growth of the calf so does Nature operate
towards the emancipation of the Purusa. Here
Nature is compared with a Cow and milk with
experience of jnana and growth with
emancipation. One may well be reminded of the famous
sloka comparing krisna with the
Cowherd who milks the Upanisad cows and grants
knowledge-Gita-milk for the emancipation of the bond
souls.

V. Karika 58 gives another analogy “ As people
engage in acts to satisfy desires, so does the
Unmanifest act for the emancipation of the purusa.”
Avyakta is compared to people who are seeking
to satisfy desires
- but the analogy is surely difficult as
prakrti has no desires of her own being
inconscient.

VI. This analogy is about as famous or notorious as
the one of andha-pangu-nayaya as it speaks of
prakrti as dancing expert. “ As a dancing
girl having exhibited herself to the spectator
ceases to dance(having no other scores)
- so does Prakrti cease to operate
when she has made herself manifest to operate when
she has made herself manifest to the Purusa.”
The analogies are all anthropomorphic and Nature
is made to be a living entity rather than an
unconscient entity.

VII. Karika 67 speaks for the condition
of the survival of the body of the liberated
purusa as continuing even like the revolutions
of the potter’s wheel after he had stopped moving
it “ As the potter’s wheel continues to revolve by
the force of the impulse previously imparted to it.”

These analogies are not poetic embellishments or
ornaments. They help us to picture the operation and
communicate clarity or suggestion for a deeper
understanding.

tc ""

4.7 BRAHMACARYA

The Chandogya Up. Ch. VIII. describes brahmacarya.
Brahmacarya is well-known as the first stage of
studentship in life. It is an asrama. The duties and
responsibilities of this stage of life are a need
for aspiration to know the Veda from a teacher
through hearing(sravana) and then alone is he fit to
enter upon life’s arduous other work.

The Chandogya mentions five conditions of
brahmacarya:

(i) It is the ista or adoration of the Supreme
Being which becomes his goal or can be held to
satisfy his aspiration for the Ultimate Knowledge.
Ista, the desirable and desired goal of all
students, is the Ultimate Knowledge, knowing which
one can be said to know all or to be fit for doing
all things in wisdom. This linking up of oneself
with a goal (the Ultimate) is achieved by yajna
(dedication or offering of oneself to the
achievement of siddhi).

(ii) The second condition prescribed by the
Upanisad is satra yana: or feeding hermits or
protecting the good persons. It is also said to be
the performance of karma (yajna-karma) which is
according to the Veda. The reference may be to the
doing of karma (yajna or yaga) presided over by many
agents. But it appears that the simple meaning that
it is to take care of good persons is more
appropriate than the technical meaning having
reference to sacrifices called satras, as Anandagiri
holds.

(iii) The third duty is the practice of mauna or
silence. Talk is not permitted but contemplation.
The hearing (sravana) is to be followed by
manana-minding or silent reflection on the heard and
lastly nididhyasana (contemplation on the occult or
hidden meaning of the Veda). Brahmacaris should not
indulge in loose talk or frivolous talk. Silence is
one of the earliest fruits of dedicated life.

(iv) Anasakayana: the method of not eating-or
fasting. Eating is one of the mistakes of the mouth
even like talk. Vak is to protected by silence and
the mouth to be protected from overeating. Control
of taste or tongue means quite a lot. In fact it is
ahara-suddhi - or purity of food. It is one of the
primary disciplines of a student - necessary and
obligatory. To this there is reference made at the
end of this section of the Upanisad itself. The Gita
has emphasized almost this. Ahara-suddhi leads to
sattva-suddhi or purity of being which leads to the
possibility of dwelling in the Divine or Brahman.
Brahman is the goal : realisation of Brahman is the
imperative for all life : the control of the sensory
and motor organs and the mind are necessary means or
preparations. In fact they occur naturally to one
who has fixed his goal.

The goal is Brahmaloka itself at the beginning.
Obviously in Brahmacarya one attains the Brahmaloka,
then would follow the Brahma-samipya, the
Brahma-sannidhya and sayujya. The World of Brahman
is described as having two samudras (oceans) called
Ara and Nya where one has to abide. Of
course the description goes on to state that there
are groves and there is a tree known as
Aparajita-the attainment of which means that one has
conquered the lower worlds (apara).

The meaning of the two terms ara and nya
give some difficulty. In fact the commentators are
silent on the meaning of these. Combining the two
terms we get aranya: the forest or wood. The asramas
used to be in the forests - (aranyas) and the
Brahmacari might be counselled to live in the forest
haunts. But the aranya or vana it is to which the
third-stage men, the vanaprasthas have to resort.
But aranya as wood comprising aranis which rubbed
together by friction give rise to fire seems to be
not capable of being equated with ara and
nya which are samudras, streams or oceans.
Surely they cannot mean the faggots or bits of wood.
To say that they are well-known oceans in Brahmaloka
does not explain anything, for it counsels that
those who live the life of Brahmacarya are those who
practice these two - certainly not oceans or
swimming in them. Most probably then it means that
these are two virtues - which are unfathomable
imperatives in which one must live.

Virtues are described as oceans - jnana and daya are
spoken of as oceans (sindhu).

Ara
means spoke of a wheel; it means that it is always
rotating and we may be able to consider whether it
means by any means the word connected with Rta. But
if it is taken to be negative which is of course
the word for discipline - then it means one who has
given up desire (ra which also means fire, love
etc). It is clear that the brahmacari has to give up
passion - sexual or otherwise which are in fact
ari : enemies of brahmacarya. There seems to be
a faint echo of this when in tamil aram means
dharma. Further it is a period of quiet and silent
meditation and dedication with discipline of study
all round and that is dispassionate condition. Ara
would refer to this. This is a vast depth of
consolidation of conduct and regularity in the
duties ‘round the clock’ as they put it.

The word Nya again is a significant word and it
means surrender or giving up all other efforts
except the development of true dharma-consciousness.
Nyasa is the procedure of dedication of placing
oneself absolutely at the service of the Guru of
God. It is this total dedication which comes out of
a disciplined conduct and supports it all the life
that makes for such a development of Brahma-bhava,
which is the Bhuma.

Nya also means the renunciation of all individual
interests to follow the lead of the Master who is
the leader (Nayaka) who really leads (nayati).

It is clear that Brahmacarya really involves the
practice fully and without limit of dispassion and
self-dedication rather than self-renunciation.
Renunciation is for those who have finished their
work in the world but not for those who are seeking
to get that point of view of the divine, that divine
perspective that Brahmaloka or salokya with Brahman
for doing their duties in this world - dharma itself
which supports all and is unfathomable.

It can be seen that in these five instructions about
Brahmacarya there is no mention of sexual
abstention. It is true that another Upanisad
pointedly says that Brahmacarya is a life of
abstention from sex. (Prasnopanisad I.) The
importance of abstention from sex arises from the
need for dispassion, non-passion for worldly goods
and pleasures which are in fact what prevent a
person from attending to the studies or for the
break up of studies.

Brahmacarya as one of the yamas is basic to search
for truth or proper understanding-along with Satya
and dama, it forms the tri-ratna of discipleship.

It is true that Brahmacarya may be taken as whole
life’s business - but then it has to be developed
into Brahma-sayujya through Brahma-samipya and
Brahma-sannidhya and finally Brahma-bhutatva. If all
the four asramas are considered to be involving and
improving on the earlier ones, then there is a
gradual attainment of the ultimate status of one who
lives and moves and has his being in Brahman.

4.8 REFLECTIONS ON THE TERMS ‘MANAS’ AND
‘BUDDHI

The concepts of
Buddhi and Manas have been used to denote certain
faculties of functions of the activity of thought or
intelligence. The original word for consciousness or
intelligence which is said to be the nature and
function of the self (knower) was cit and
cit-sakti. Thus the ultimate nature of the self
was cit and obviously the derivative citta
is word for conscious-activity. However it was shown
that the words denoting the activity of
consciousness in the body should be differentiated
from this original cit. The word caitanya is
also a derivative of cit, and it denotes the
awareness of the content of consciousness. Thus
Krsna-caitnya would mean one who has been informed
by Krsna or whose consciousness has its content only
Krsna or the form of Krsna.Thus when cit works
through the organic nature formed by Prakrti
(Nature), there are modifications of this cit:
thus buddhi is the consciousness of the objects in
their pure nature (sattvika), ahamkara is the
consciousness of the objects in their individuated
or particularity and subjectively self-consciousness
of objects as the possession of knowledge of
objects, and manas is the consciousness as in the
feeling aspect and as connected with the
sense-organs and motor organs. Thus we find that
buddhi, ahamkara and manas are different levels of
the organic consciousness, revealing increasing
grossness. All are in a sense the operations of
citta (original activity of consciousness, cit, or
cit-sakti). It we consider that this is the meaning
of the word citta in the Yoga Sutras
then all these are material modifications of that
citta or cit which belongs to and is the
nature of the purusa (soul).The vedic seers
thought of manas as derived from Candramas1 and
Dhi from Savitr. Candramas has been shown to be Rayi
and Savitr or Surya or Aditya from
Prana.2 The
Gayatri makes the concept of Dhi the more important
as soul-consciousness or Citi itself. (dhiyo yo
nah pracodayat).3

The light of the Moon is of ignorance or darkness
and full of illusion. Any one knows that moon-light
can deceive; it is of shadows. The most exciting
moonlight is of a deceiptful nature. Whereas the
light of the sun is capable of revealing the real
nature of things or objects. The word Buddhi is in
one sense a derivative of dhi; bud-refering to the
flowering nature of that dhi, or arising or bubbling
up (embryonic form of the knowledge of prakrti or in
prakrti:budbuda). The derivation of buddhi from
bodha etc. appears to be later for dhi is
the more important root for direct and real and
ultimate knowledge of the permanent. It almost
appear that this original word dhi formed the
meaning behind the word used for the knowers of the
Brahman dhirah: (iti susruma dhiranam: sarvani
rupani vicitya dhirah).

This concept of the dhira as the person who is
endowed with the self-knowledge that grants the true
knowledge of all things in their eternal nature
(yathartha) is very important for the arisal of
this knowledge in prakrit is called buddhi or jnana
which has its relation to prakrtic knowledge alone
and not of the self. It is true that buddhi may lead
to that knowledge which reveals the soul or purusa
to be different from matter. Indeed we also see that
buddhi is compared to a mirror within which the self
is reflected and from this arises the other
speculative or imaginative meanings. Thus this
reflected knowledge (buddhi) is said to arise
from candramas itself or since candramas is Prakriti
or Rayi in Mythological language it is said that
Buddha is the son of Candramas even as Buddhi is
derivative of Prakrti owing to the reflection of
Purusa in it and such being the myth it is even said
that this Buddha is an illegitimate child or
product. Prakrti really belongs to Guru (Brahma
or Brhaspati) as Tara but conceives the Buddha
for Candramas. We are not called upon to unravel
this myth here, but it is clear that the ancient
knew that the original word for Intelligence is dhi
not Buddhi, for Buddhi is the word of dhi in
relation to knowledge of Prakrti or Rayi not its
original status as cit or cit-sakti.

When certain yogins claim that the nature or man’s
mind is of the same nature as the primal thought of
the Brahma it is to be assumed that the stuff that
makes knowledge possible is the self’s consciousness
(cit) and not the instrument known as manas
or ahamkara or buddhi. The same cit operates
throughout and the knowledge or thought is
identical, only it is in a conditioned and obviously
even inverted kind (vivarta) owing to the law
of invertendo (i.e. all movement follows the law of
inverson or wave-movement which is one form of
inversion vivarta).

Therefore to speak of manasapratyaksa as a kind
knowledge is to sanctify the moonshine knowledge
which misleads.

Broadly speaking the above leads to certain
reflections about man and his future.

Man as the name signifies is one who has a mind
(manas). The grammarians usually derive the word
manas from man to think. But the
proper meaning of the word man should be to imagine
rather than think, for thought leads to truth
whereas imagination more often leads to fanciful
expectons and illusory glamour. Think or Know the
Real as it is in its plenary nature is a property of
the Dhi.

Mankind today whether it knows it or not or realises
it or not is a creature of imagination, utoplanism
and idealism. Its whole range of ideas and notions
are all dedicated to enjoyment. Even literature in
so far as it is a medium of imagination or so called
creative construction is of the order of
illusoriness however satisfying to the
illusory-experience of such standards. When
therefore certain daring spirits councelled the
transcendence of man in evolution, the whole of
mankind in a fit of redicule, or horror or amazement
and finally in desperation about its own future has
made all ethics service the human programmes of
imaginative satisfactions of man’s survival urge as
men not as evolution would demand the increase and
transcendence of man and his race itself. Humanism
as against super-manism is precisely this declared
horror of higher evolution for it condemns man to
extinction in due course if not at once. No wonder
many are against the whole adventure of Sri
Aurobindo to announce the birth of the Gnostic man (buddha
or Dhirah). But it is something that is decreed.
If mankind has to survive it can survive only by
advancing forward and not by staying on as it is.
Humanism of all kinds plead for the preservation of
all error of man and seek indulgence. But it has
been seen that all error is self-defeating and
cannot be universalised and so too indulgence can
finally make all such indulgence impossible or a
crime. The folly of man is in thinking that
compasssion which obviously means not kindliness as
such but all round indulgence to error is a solvent
of human troubles. Tolerance and compassion are
necessary in so far as they help the condition for
rethinking and realistic thinking and those to whom
these are shown are able to profit by it.
Helpfulness is about the most important on the path
of evolution to higher type of consciousness and
intelligence.

Man’s whole nature
must undergo drastic changes. Till now they have
been encouraged by qualities of force and power.
Here after they have to be brought about
transcendental pure thought (cit or cit-sakti).
Whether we assume a descent that has brought thought
to its lowest form of mechanical perception and
emotional power or imagination, it is clear that
these have to yeild place to the primal cit-force
whose nature is one of transcendence of all moonish
imagination or manas in one word. Manas is
the cause of man’s bondage and the renunciation of
manas is the cause of his freedom: manaeva
manusyanam karanam bandhamoksayoh means this
much alone. Yoga vasista had shewn the power
of imagination (manas as imagination). The
so-called divine imagination also would fall into
sheer speculative creativity. The divine imagination
creates realities and as such all objects are of the
stuff of reality or the theory of real idea is a
view that has to be thought of not in respect of
manas but in terms of dhi and not even in terms of
Buddhi. In fact Gautama, the Buddha, made a great
point when he pointed our that Buddhi helps the
destruction of material creation, and produces
nirvana-cessation of all creation in terms of
human existence, Even the buddhi-yoga of Shri
Krsna helps the attainment of the awareness of the
ksetra-ksetrajna and leads to Brahma-nirvana. Beyond
this is the realisation of the Brahma-bhutatva
or Suddha-sattvatva or the real Cit-existence
ananda.

A
firm understanding of the psychological use of the
terms by the several darsanikas and their
commentators had reduced all of them to synonyms and
confusion.

Creation is originally Real and is based on the Dhi
cit sakti of the Divine.Thus all can be said to be
produced by and sustained by the One Dhi or
will, satya-sankalpata. This so long as it
remained at the level of the Self or Soul remained
the Pure Creation, without the modifications of the
Cit or matter (rayi) which has infinite
potentialities in modification. The descent of the
one Cit-Sakti undergoing several modifications tends
to lose the original thoughtforce but more and more
reveals Force-thought (inversion of the former) till
finally we have force and still descending we have
even the loss of force. Thus this condition in one
sense veils the entire process and it has to be
lifted up so that its prior conditions may be
studied. The ascent then reveals in full the prior
processes. It may thus be seen that the practical
realization of the lowest process lies in showing
how it involves the entire process of descent
itself.

The theory of degradation of energy or
thought-energy to the level of matter stresses the
monistic impulse. Ancient writers have stated that
this energy moves in three level so to speak (i) the
upward moving or leading Agni which usually resortes
the process its primal coinditions of pure thought,
(ii) the solar thought-energy that reveals the
entire reality of objects anf self without
distortion or modification, and (iii) the lunar or
energy-concealing thought and productive of shadows
and illusions (cave-images or reflections) and
finally the matter known through senses and manas.

The first is called Dhi or cit, the
second is called dhi also whereas the third is
called manas. As a matter of fact there is surely
some appositeness in calling the Pitrs as manas–the
moon-lining and reincarnating souls which
unliberated.

It can be seen that in Apte’s Dictionary no clearly
idea is given regarding the use of the Dhi in
Dhimahi in the Gayatri (Nor is there any clear
indication given about the use of the word Dhyana
(dhi-yana or the path of the Dhi or the way
of Dhi) Brahaspati is called Shiyam-patih.
The word Dhira: Dhiyam rati dhirah; is said
to refer to the one of firm resolve or thought
rather than the consequence of such firm thought
leading to courageous action or bravery. It us said
to be the name of Buddha (Apte) Whitney in his
Roost, Verbs notes that _/Dhya : to think
is a secondary form of the root Dhi : to think. (p.
85 ).

Ancient Vedic writers did know clearly the
distinciton between the functions of the manas and
did not confuse it as later writers have done. For
it is a fact that it Is dhi that worked though the
organs of manas, ahamkara and the sense organs and
motor organs not to speak of Buddhi.

The word Buddhi is sometimes claimed to be derived
from the root budh: to know, wake up. Bodhi is that
of a person who has woken up or one who is
illumined. But this is quite different from dhi
as such which is assimilted into cit (er
sat-cit-ananda) which is entirely of the soul or
spirit or atman and is unconditioned by the material
apparatus of Prakrti or Rayi. One who
is a Sage is a dhira one who courageously or
firmly carries out the purposes of the soul in
matter for it is Pure Thought that can carry out the
entire purpose in Matter (Rayi) even like an
Isvara or Lord.

In ancient thought individuated function words
coalesce to bring out the integrated meaning. This
integrated multiple meanings tends to become
synonymous and then disintegrated and lead to
misunderstanding and misuse. Again and again the
yoga (yaugika) use of words has to be
restored in order to bring out the technical
accuracy in the use of terms or restore their
function. It is this that restores the spirit to the
letter and letters being to breathe new meaning so
to speak.

Philosophy requires the air of accurate philology
but philology may also betray the trust reposed in
it.

4.9 YOGANGAS AND BHAKTI

The eight-limbed yoga comprising yama, niyama,
asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and
samadhi is said to form part of bhakti-yoga by
Visistadvaita teachers. The interpretations of these
practices, of course, will undergo certain
modifications when considered in the context of
bhakti-yoga, which definitely aims at union with
God. The yoga-sutra affirms that yoga means only the
control of the modifications of citta (mind,
including the whole apparatus of buddhi, ahamkara,
and manas).

The procedure adopted by the Visistadvaita School
for this practice of union with God includes the
yama, niyama etc. Yama means control and this
applies firstly to the basic control and this
applies firstly to the basic control over the motor
organs. Thus satya or speaking the truth is control
over the speech (vak), ahimsa, aparigraha, and
asteya (non-cruelty, non-grasping, and non-stealing)
refer to the control of hands, legs and mouth (in
eating), and brahmacarya (chastity) refers to the
control of the organ of generation. Thus, we have
the first insistence on the control over the vak,
pani, pada, payu and upastha. These are the
preliminaries and control over these organs is the
first step.

The second step involves niyama, which helps further
control of the organs. There are regulations which
help the realization of purity of the body and the
other organs of sense, in addition to that of the
motor organs. The most important of these is
cleanliness (sauca) in speech, body and mind. This
means that one has to gather things which are not
tainted with asatya, steya, parigraha, and so on.
Physical cleanliness is obtained by wash or bath in
clean or sacred waters, mental cleanliness by divine
thoughts, and cleanliness of speech by uttering only
divine words, or singing devotional songs. The
Divine manifested as Parama Purusa Isvara (God as
supreme Person) for accepting adoration and worship
of devotees and granting grace to them has to be
surrendered to. But that can be done through the
help of one who is considered to be the most eminent
person in this respect, having himself crossed the
samsara and attained the highest state of
spirituality. This person is the guru or the acarya
(preceptor) who lives the life of inseparable union
with God. To such a guru one should utterly or give
himself up heart and soul for spiritual
transformation not merely for crossing over samsara
comprising births and deaths, but also all this is
between these two ends. This is Isvara-pranidhana,
surrendering or placing oneself at the feet of God
through the guru, who is the leader on the path of
salvation and the mediator for union with God.

Asana is the third step. This means that for
meditating on God, one should sit down in an easy
posture like the siddhasana or the padmasana. This
should be steady and easy, not tortuous. There are
many postures which are mentioned by the writers on
this susbject, but they are merely physical
exercises hardly useful for meditation. When
worshipping God one is also instructed to sit in
kurmasana (tortoise posture), withdrawing the legs
into oneself, so to speak. This is very significant,
because the yogin is said to withdraw his senses
into himself even like the tortoise. (Vide Gita,
II-58) At present, people make a seat with the form
of a tortoise and sit on it. But, in regular
yogasana intended for union with Brahman or God,
what is prescribed is not the symbolic seat, but the
real steadiness in sitting for a considerable time.
Some cultivate this so as to be able to sit for a
number of hours. In any real concentration of work,
the attainment of steadiness in sitting or posture
(which is another meaning of the term siddha) is an
absolute necessity. A wandering and fidgety body
hardly makes for control of the mind.

Pranayama is control of prana or the vital force.
For this prupose, rhythm is sought to be established
in breathing. Without entering into the question as
to what breath means or does, it is suggested that
the regulation of breathing is necessary, so that
steady breathing is established. Therefore, the
control of breath takes the form of inhalation,
retention and exhalation of air through the two
nostrils. As a matter of fact, any observer can see
that breath flows in one nostril only at a time. The
flow changes once in about an hour or an hour and
half, from one nostril to another. (The science of
prediction, based on this flow, has ben developed
and is known as svara-sastra). The health of a man
can also be determined by the loss of this rhythm in
change. The puraka (inhalation of breath), kumbhaka
(retention of breath), and recaka (exhalation of
breath) have to be done in a certain definite way
and proportion of duration. Ordinarily, the
inhalation, retention, and exhalation should have
their duration in the proportion of 1:2:1. The
kumbhaka can be extended, but then the two processes
of inhalation and exhalation have also to be
extended. In any case, the breath control or rather
regulation of it, as in the other two cases of yama
and niyama is very necessary. Health means
regulation (yama), not abolition or utter
destruction. Before any ritual or religious work is
done, including sandhya worship, pranayama has to be
performed.

These having been done, one is seated before the
deity or guru, either actually installed or present
or imagined, and having performed pranayama, one
begins to worship the Divine, praying for Union. The
Divine is to be the object of one’s meditation and
adoration. The senses, however, wander about in
search of food or visaya (ahara). The proper diet
for the senses, which are now under control or
regulation, has to be found. The proper or right
objects of consumption for a yogin or seeker after
union are detailed by the saints. The mouth must
praise God, that is its food; the hands must adorn
the Divine; the eyes must behold the beauty of God;
the ears must hear the songs on God or hear about
His exploits. Indeed, all senses need such food, and
one can grant this to them. It is not in denial of
all food (nirahara), but in giving pratyahara food
contrary to that, which leads them away from God.
God’s infinite nature is such that it can supply
untiringly food for the senses and the mind even. It
is often said that Pratyahara means controlling the
senses and the mind by force. But patanjali himself
has said that, when the mind or the senses tend to
go outward to sensual and other objects, they should
be supplied with adequate objects of purity which
will counteract this outward movement
(vitarkabadhane pratipaksa bhavanam, yoga-sutra, II
33) Pratipaksa means here Pratyahara—granting
contrary food which is much sweeter and healthier
than the spiced wretchedness that with wrong taste.
Thus one should contemplate on God through
meditation on His wonderful qualities. During
worship or aradhana, God is offered dhupa (fragrant
smoke), dipa (light), sandal paste, flowers, leaves,
fruits, and water as part of the offering and these
are, indeed, pratyahara. The worhsipper breathes the
fragrance etc. offered to the God with pure and
dedicated heart. This interpretation may seem to be
new, but the actual practice of such worship by the
ancients shows that they did, in fact, feel that the
spiritual food for the individual should be these
godly things, and they really provide the most
satisfying experience for even the entire physical
nature.

Dharana is the process of holding the object of
concentration in the mind. This, in bhakti, becomes
equivalent to continuous bearing or remembrance of
God unbroken like the stream of oil (taila-dhara
avicchinnavat). This means continuous japa, combined
with remembrance and aspiration. When this
remembrance is continuous and unbroken, one gets
established in Him. This is in one sense smarana or
manana. The individual who has so far trained his
mind also to be in continuous memory of God is led
forward to the higher levels—the path of dhi or
dhyana. One should see at this point that this is
not merely establishing oneself in the buddhi or the
seat of discrimination. Dhyana may be said to be the
path of higher light. The Vedhi dhi, as found in the
Gayatri hymn, makes one go forward towards Divine
Union. Some may equate it with dhyana-yoga and that
rightly, too. The higher vision begins to open up,
and one is led towards samadhi. In this sense
dhyana, leads to samadhi, which means dwelling in
the highest light that transforms the mind and
grants it real vision—upanayana, the eye competent
for the vision of Truth.

Samadhi is usually said to be trance state—the state
of prajna which the Upanisads equate with deep sleep
(susupti), when the senses and the mind have all
come to a standstill. This trance state is called
samprajnata-samadhi. The state that leads to the
turiya (fourth condition), where the realization
transcends this trance state and one is in constant
spiritual awareness i.e. in the state of sahaja, is
called asamprajnata samadhi, the supra-trance state.

This expalanation, of course, is strange to persons
who think that the samprajnata and asamprajnata have
to be equated with savikalpa and nirvikalpa or
sarupa or nirupa forms of highest Brahman. The
condition of trance in dhyana is known to be lesser
than the sahaja or the turiya condition which is the
condition of godly existence in the waking condition
itself. This is the condition of the liberated ones
or those in whom the descent of the Divine,
avatarana, in some form has taken place. Such a
person is truly considered to be the person in whom
God dwells—bhagavata or Divine-like.

Bhakti thus shows that these eight limbs of
Yoga-sastra are capable of being utilized for
God-realization. Therefore, Sri Ramanuja was able to
say that the Rajayoga of Patanjali is verily the
Bhakti-yoga itself provided we can emphasize the
real nature of Isvara-pranidhana in pratyahara,
dharana, dhyana, and samadhi. Bhakti-yoga is the
culmination and fulfilment of Jnana-yoga, which
seeks oneness or union with God as the highest
knowledge. It is this jnana called Semusi that
develops into Bhakti-pravaha, the stream of Bhakti
or Dhyana, uninterrupted by any other influence till
it mingles with the Ocean of Ananda—Jnananandamayam
or Jnanadayasindhu, and so on.

Suddhabhakti is thus attained and leads to enjoyment
of oneness with Brahman-Guru-Isvara, all in one’s
nature and without any possibility of separation
(viraha or vislesa).

4.10 THE TRIPLE BODIES

It is usual to speak about three bodies (sariras) of
man in Vedanta. They are called Causal (karana),
suksma (subtle) and sthula (gross). This
classification would recall at once that both the
suksma (subtle) and the sthula (gross) are
karya-sariras (effects) of the karana-sarira (causal
body). The Advaita Mayavada Vedanta holds that the
causal body is avidya (ignorance), and the suksma
and sthula bodies are the linga sarira (the body
that accompanies the soul on its transmigratory
cycles) and the sthula sarira (the body that is born
and grows and dies and is cremated or buried, whose
elements thus join their respective elements).

Avidya itself as cause is not merely Ignorance, it
is ignorance on the part of the individual soul that
it is one with and is Brahman: it may also be stated
that it is karma also in the sense that all
activities of the individual in a life, whether
ritual and obligatory or optional, or ordinary
karmas or actions performed with interest in certain
goals, are those which impel the individual to take
births for fulfilling their desires and thus
effectuate births. Thus avidya is both ignorance and
karma both in its causal and effectual or fruit
states.

The Ignorance however is stated to be independent of
the soul and attaches itself to the individual and
thus becomes the karana or cause. There are certain
schools of thought which consider that karma is
anadi (beginningless), so too avidya. This concept
of anadi or beginninglessness is itself as
intriguing for it is attempted by this to avoid
infinite regress. Of course it is certainly not
avoiding it by this word.

There are therefore karma and avidya (whether these
be synony-mous or not does not much matter). The
question is whether they are upadana or material
cause or efficient cause or both. The attempt to
make avidya itself the material cause by equating it
with prakrti or primerdial Nature will have to
explain the efficient cause as avidya or as karma.
There is a Vedantic attempt to make Brahman both the
material and the efficient cause, and this is
difficult to prove on the basis of pramanas such as
perception or inference or analogy too. Dvaita and
Vaiseshika schools recognize that it is natural to
have the upadana and nimitta causes as distinct. So
too Samkhya. Organic relationship between Nature and
God can help to explain the unity of material and
efficient causes: this is not possible to a theory
of pure or absolute Monism.

Thus the Causal (karana) sarira must be more than
mere avidya (karma) and must include the Nature and
also God or Ultimate Spirit. Being a sarira it must
be something that envelops the soul and limits it
and produces the chain of causes and effects, and
also it must be capable of being discarded. But if
we hold that the soul itself is not a product of
avidya (as in Mayavada), but is a real entity which
is entirely dependent on the Ultimate Godhead and is
sustained and enjoyed by that Being alone and as
such is His body (according to Sri Ramanuja) the
soul is not a sarira in the usual sense but in an
ontological sense and becomes the cause of the
evolution of itself in conjunction with Nature and
karma. Karma must be some occult function (dharma)
granted to each and every soul primordially which it
has to work itself out and perfectly for the sake of
the Divine.

This might be the meaning of the word anadi
(beginningless) in a further sense that every soul
is eternally dependent on the Divine for its
existence itself and its works are ordained from the
very eternity. A secondary meaning of the word
causal might be more germane to us in so far as we
are concerned with our cycle of births and deaths.
Karma which is primordial gets forgotten or diverted
to lesser subjective ends and thus twisted it loses
its original impetus and urge which it got from the
Divine Self. Thus there happens self-limitation for
personal enjoyment and avidya becomes dominant.
Indeed it appears plausible to think that the
wonderful power of God which illumined the functions
of each and every one of the souls itself turned out
to be inexplicable and turned towards ignorance
losing illumination and basic creative power. There
is truth in the assertion that when the souls are
godly Maya of the Supreme is jnanam, vayunam and
liberating whereas when the souls invert this the
very maya becomes difficult to understand and cross
over (mama maya duratyaya as Sri Krsna says)
and forms itself into avidya. The sattva or luminous
nature becomes dark (tamas). In this sense Sri
Ramchandraji of Fatehgarh calls sattva the karana,
rajas as subtle and tamas as gross sarira of the
soul, from the psychological point.

Man’s desires form the causal body according to
Buddha. Trishna or desire or craving is the cause of
all formation of instruments or karanas for
realizing them for a soul. The soul itself
ultimately appears to be nothing but the grouping or
constellation or pattern of desire.

These karmas or desires themselves become subtle and
gross bodies into two stages. Thus activity produces
material itself for forming bodies. This implies a
view explicated or explained by the Jainas that
activity itself produces matter (pudgala) that
enters the soul and binds it by sheaths. The linga
sarira is the subtle sheath comprising in samkhyan
philosophy buddhi-ahamkara, manas and the
sense-organs and motor-organs which are all of the
infinitesimal size: this linga sarira is supported
by the karma (avidya) pattern growing from life to
life and thus modifying life after life. This subtle
or ling sarira along with the karma-body
(karana-body) so to speak is the traveller from body
to body so as to enjoy or experience bhoga
(experiences) sought by it or wrought by its desire.
The sthula body is of course the last body which is
composed of gross elements which undoubtedly are
according to the subtle condition of the tanmatras
and sensory and motor organs.

Thus we have the karana sarira which supports the
subtle karya śarīra
which in turn is the karana of the sthula sarira.

There is an underlying idea however at this point
which demands clarification, and that is whether the
causal sarira contains in embryo or potentiality all
that the effects reveal both in the linga (suksma)
and the gross (sthula) bodies. It is held that all
events and future not merely the past is contained
in the karana or occurs in the Karana (which of
course is quite a different thing). Thus it is held
that any outer or gross change should have been
preceded by the inner subtle and causal changes. It
is thus held that thought works firstly in the
causal and then in the subtle effectual and then the
gross effectual conditions. One who can perceive-
the causal condition of any person can determine
what he would or could do in his life later. And it
is possible to change the causal by cutting out the
desires there and thus bring about healthy changes
in the subtle and then in the gross. This theory of
causal determination of course faces a serious
challenge when it is held that the effects are
entirely new products and not present in the cause.
Be this as it may, it is clear that plans precede
execution and thus the idea precedes action, and
ideas can be causative forces for effectual
executions of the ideas. In this sense the cause
pre-visages the effect and changes in the idea can
alter the effects accordingly. Thus if desires are
annulled or modified effects do not ensue in the
effect of the subtle and gross bodies. There are
thus elements in life which permit this modification
of the causes of our existences or patterns of being
and this should embolden one to undertake the
precise place where we have to seize the effect.
Indeed the aim of life is to attain that original
purity of Being and thus arrest the causal condition
that has brought about the trail of subtle and gross
body-building.

Whether we assume three bodies or two only it is
clear that the causal body is conceived as the
ideational form of the effectual. The getting rid of
the causal nexus is the aim of all teaching and
yoga. A clear concept of the nature of the causal is
necessary. Our desires form the cause and seek to
project themselves into the effect, and they are the
dynamic causes moulding the very pattern of
evolution and birth. They are in fact the continuing
causes till the last effect or fruit is realised.
Our bondage and misery is due to the fact that our
individual desires are not all effective in
realisation and get interferences and obstructions.
Bondage becomes clear and patent in the effect; even
like a disease awaiting its diagnosis one has to
discover the nature of the cause. We have found that
desire and wish are the germinal facts and counter
desires and wishes have to be made in order to break
up the causal body. Thought moving downwards and
exteriorly has to be turned inwards and break up the
patterns or knots of causality (karana); thus
handled the knots that have framed themselves into
subtle and gross bodies begin to get loosened and
tension is lost. One gains the first feeling of
peace – non-tension. The reverse movements first set
up reverse vibrations in the whole body starting
with the heart, the grossest formation as the seat
of mind citta. Moving upward these vibrations unknot
all the subtle and gross bodily knots and finally
break up the causal body. The cause being thus
extinguished the effects do not have any effect nor
do they arise thereafter. This is the withering of
the causal body – nisprapancikarana.

The ultimate condition of the soul or self is thus
beyond these three bodies –karana, sukama and
sthula.

4.11 SAMADHI IN YOGA PSYCHOLOGY

SAMADHI is the final state in the practice of
Yoga. It is not however the goal of Yoga. The goal
of Yoga is liberation moksa, or realisation of union
with the Infinite, the ‘infinitising’ of the soul by
the infinite. Samadhi however has been used in both
senses as means (upaya) as well as end (purusartha),
because of its proximateness to the end.

The Minor Upanisads deal with the nature of samadhi
as completely as possible. The Yoga Sutras of
Patanjali is almost a summary of the teachings of
the Upanisads in respect of the sadhana.

Samadhi is the state of complete absorption or
trance of concentration on the self or Atman. There
are two stages in this trance-the samprajnata and
asamprajnata or kala and nishkala, murti-taraka and
amurti-taraka.1

Samprajnata samadhi is characterised by lucidity of
perception, firstly of oneself, and secondly, of all
objects in their subjective form or intrinsic
reality. This is the first stage of the samadhi; it
is in this stage the prajna is full and enjoys peace
and completeness.

Asamprajnata stage is a deeper stage when the
individual soul finds absorption in the Highest or
the Infinite One, Secondless Brahman.

If the samprajnata stage corresponds with the prajna
or deepsleep state of the Mandukya upanisad
symbolised by the letter (M), the
asamprajnata stage corresponds to the turiya or
fourth state symbolised by the bindu.

In the Nada-bindu
meditation when the pranava (Om) sabda
rises to the level of Nada, bindu, kala cakras with
help of prana2,which are
placed about the region of the bhru-madhya and above
it, to the crown of the head, it passes through the
stages or centres named nadanta, niskala, unmani
and etc. The first stage is the ajnacakra stage of
prajna, the others are the transitory stages to the
asamprajnata turiya stage. Some writers consider
that there are stages beyond the turiya, namely, the
turiyatita or beyond the fourth; most probably they
mean the transcendental stage beyond the creative
manifestation.

Even at the bindu and kala levels,
consciousness is recollected and intuitive, direct ,
and all objects are perceived in their depths
intrinsically or in the causal-condition that is
about to manifest objective reality. The suggestion
contained is that it is a consciousness that
evaluates and knows the direction and purpose of the
manifestation in time space, of the possibilities in
things which a superficial knowledge of them by the
senses and mind even cannot give. It is
supra-inferential and supra-perceptual knowledge, a
knowledge by a type or identity or modified
identity.

Some kind of transcendence over the mind (manas)
happens even in the stage of the prajna-state at the
ajna, but a more complete transcendence
occurs only beyond the ajna. The ajna centre
is the mediating centre which acts both in the
interests of the mind and beyond mind thus passing
on the higher to the lower and the lower to the
higher. It is the santa-state or state of peace,
beyond the dvandava (pairs of opposition or
polarities). Though roughly the ajna and the
sahasrara mark the two important centres for
samprajnata and asamprajnata samadhi, yet there are
several intermediary levels such as savicara,
nirvicara, savitarka, nirvitarka, saksi and asaksi.3
The highest
kind of samadhi is beyond all these differences and
polarities or rather both the polarities are upheld
by a superior self-consciousness4.

Well may we consider that this stage is the
Khecari-state, a state when one lives and moves and
has his being in the unlimited expanse akasa. Again
we are told that this akasa is the daharakasa in the
heart5.
There is the oneness that is said to be attained
when the ghatakasa (daharakasa) becomes one with the
Mahakasa, the indivisible great akasa or the
parakasa (transcendental akasa) which is
indescribable tejas or jyotis,
omnipervasive and of unsurpassable delight: as the
Mandalabrahmana Up. Says.6 It
is then that the microcosm and the macrocosm attain
unity (pinda-brahmandyor-aikyam) as the Yoga
Kundalini Up. Says7.
Everything becomes united in this consciousness, and
the illusory view of the mind which distinguishes
and separates all things and makes them appear as
separated and opposed to one another is transcended.
The individual soul becomes such that it is united
with or merged in the Transcendent:
saindhavapindavat. The Mundaka Up. has described
this as the union of the rivers with the ocean.

I
shall now consider the experience of the
samadhi-state in greater detail. The physiological
process of trance is fundamental in this experience
of oneness. In Raja Yoga and Hatha yoga this is
unavoidable. It is to be noted that in this stage
the soul or psychic being is withdrawn from the
outer activities and even reversed so that the
condition of the body is such that it subsists only
on the minimum of nutrition, water, prana. It is a
state of sole subsistence on the Universal Power
meditated upon, as Sakti, Sadasiva, or Isvara.
Though the eyes do not see, the ears do not hear,
and the mind does not think or mind, the individual
is aware of everything that occurs about him
directly. This is the alaukika pratyaksa or
Yoga-pratyaksa of the yogi in samadhi-state. Though
like a stick, stiff and absorbed with vision
inturned within the bhru-madhya or tip of the nose
(nasikagra) he is in the fixed state of
sthita-prajna.

The individual becomes master of the body and the
elements on which the body depends because no longer
is the body sought to be maintained by recourse to
any external body or element: Isvaratvam avapnoti
Sadabhyasaratah pumān.

The Minor Upanisads suggests almost that the Divine
begins to pervade the body in all its parts. Thus
the Brahma Vidya Upanisads states that just as oil
pervades the sesamum-seed, fragrance the flower, so
the Divine pervades(the body) both within and
without:8
Alvars
describe this descent of the Divine in the sarira
of the individual as synchronising with the
pervasion of the soul itself within the body. This
is the establishment in the golden Meru-Rock of
Gold- the Hiranmaya Purusa which grants utter
felicity and delight and essential Be-ing.9

We have to notice that this state of attainment is
the most difficult to describe. The Soul it is
stated merges in the Divine All; even its identity
is annulled as a separate creature of name or form.
Not merely is the soul withdrawn into the Divine
All, even the activities in the separative body seem
to be replaced gradually by the Divine activity, the
individual becoming in turn the spectator of this
osmosis. Every pore or cell of the body, every
nerve and ligament and muscle become suffused with
His light-power or under the control of the Divine
Self directly and the body ceases to be the
instrument of action or knowledge of the individual
soul but of the Divine All. Linked up with the
universal Force and active in and by it there
happens a transformed world, of which the previous
vision was an illusion or appearance. The striking
contrast between the individual world and the Divine
world almost reduces the former to the status of a
mirage. The Minor Upanishads indeed dwell on this
contrast; and impressed by this reversed nature of
the seen world, the point out that the world in
which we live is a dream-world, a phantasmagoria.9

The individual soul practices the identity with the
Brahman10
in the
Samadhi states, and gradually begins to feel with
joy and deep experience the trance of
interpenetration, firstly a poise of freedom from
all limitations between the individual and the
universal, secondly a perfect universalisation of
its own nature when naught else exists except the
one Brahman. All pervading. There is a perfect
outpouring or down pouring of the Divine into each
soul that has offered itself to Him, purified,
rejecting every thing and every other desire,
steadfast in renunciation, steady in meditation and
brave in heart with the light and flame of faith and
surrender.

Thus Sandilya is taught by Atharvana thus “known
that by wisdom He who is one, the shining, the giver
of the power of the atman, the omniscient. The lord
of all, and the inner self of all beings, who lives
in all beings, which is hidden in all beings, who is
reachable only through Yoga, and who creates,
sustain and destroys everything. He is atman; know
the several worlds in the atman. Do not grieve O
knower of atman, thou shalt reach the end of pains11”.

The instruction given by Lord Siva to Kumara to
look at the Atman alone, to know it as one’s own to
enjoy the Atman as oneself and to stay in peace and
contentment in the Atman and to wander in the Atman,
is one more fact that has to be taken into
consideration, for it is said that this leads to
videha-mukti or emancipation after death.12

In the later sections of the same Upanisad Rbhu
tells Nidhaga “There is nothing that you see which
is not your self:—— everything seen or heard or
thought is unreal and have no basis without
Brahman. Brahman is, all are within Brahman,
because Brahman is within them.”

The Tejobindu Up. emphasises the utter realisation
of self-realisation in all respects:

..Svacaitanya svayam sthasye
svatmarajye sukerame |

Svatmasimhasane
sthitvasvatmano’nyanna cintaye || III. 25

Svayameva svayam hamsah svayam eva svayam sthitah |

Svayameva svayam pasyet svatmarajye sukhe vaset ||
IV. 31

Svasvarupe svayam jyotih svasvarupe svayam ratih |

Vacamagocaranando vangmano’gocarah’svayam ||
IV.52.

Nor are the words less significant when the Lord of
the Sun embracing Yajnavalkya says “I am thou
alone. There is no difference between thee and me
owing to the fullness of Paramatman.” This is why
perhaps we have in the Brhadaranyaka Up. the most
mystical utterance “I was Manu. I was the sun ”-a
thought
13,
characteristic of the statements of SriKrsna when He
delineated the vibhutis or greatness of Himself in
the Gita.

The words of Varaha to Rbhu are most instructive
again of this mystic unity : “He is an undaunted
person who by his own experience cognizes as his
own real nature, all that is the all witness. That
is the noumenal vijnana, that is the blissful Atman
and that is the self-resplendent. He is one who
should be known as I myself. O Rbhu, May thou
become that ”- svasvarupataya sarvam veda
svanubhavena yah : sa dhirah as tu vijneyah so’ham
tat tvam bhava.”14

This state is capable of being attained renouncing
the objective world of sense or samkalpa and
becoming lost in the Divine:- tanmayo bhava
says the Annapurna Up.15

This is the samadhi or Brahmasamadhi: samadhi
sabdena paraprajnocyate buddhaih.

The experience of Brahman thus leads to two stages ;
(i) of being lost in Him and (ii) the finding of
oneself in the state of Brahmic vastness as well as
the Brahmic-selfness of all things. This state of
the self or rather status of the soul is of course
quite distinct from the status of the finite,
conditional soul that it was before
samadhi-experience, because the soul now almost
feels its universality and omnipervasiveness-which
are characteristic of Brahman alone as the
Unconditioned Universal. The experience of course is
real whatever may be the philosophical justification
of this experience, which we shall try to state
later.

The mystic revelatory realisation then is to be
distinguished from the actual process of the
realisation. Though the practices are fundamentally
of the order of identity, yet the fact is constantly
emphasized that the realisatioin is always after
death.

13.
Brhar Up.I.iv.11

14.
Varaha Up.II.30

15.
Annapurna,Up.I.43-45

The body has to be finally shoved away. It is not
considered to be such that it can continue, for it
is part and parcel of Nature which has been
perceived to be sublated or annulled or, to be
precise, found to be illusion apart from the Brahman
who is now found to be its essence and truth and
also because its nature is to be ever-changing.

There is however one aspect to which we must refer
in this connection namely to the conception of
samadhi as enunciated in the Yoga Sutra and the
Gita.

Contemplation or dhyana itself becomes samadhi,
trance, when only the object of contemplation
remains and the meditator loses consciousness of his
self.(III.3) The Yoga Sutra (IV.29) mentions that
“even after illumination there arises in one who
works without attachment the constant flow of pure
discrimination called the Cloud of Merit
(dharma-megha) which is the best samadhi.” The
description of this dharma-megha or the cloud
of dhrma (which M.Dvivedi translates as merit) is
an important state in so far it almost describes the
descent of the Universal which is described as the
cloud which is full of rain, of truth, which is the
support of all life. The Yoga Sutras accept the
twofold division of samadhi as samprajnata and
asamprajnata. The asamprajnata samadhi does two
things by two steps: the first is bhava pratyaya,which
suppresses the modifications of citta(citta-vrtti-nirodha),
and a deep Ignorance overpowers his consciousness,
or else he remains a sheer witness : the second is
upayapratyaya where all modifications
are burnt up, and a perfect detachment of the soul (purusa)
from prakrti (matter) occurs.

The Bhagavad Gita gives a deeper and significant
account of the Samadhi. We come across the concept
of Sthita-prajna in the second chapter. Sri Krsna
defines samadhi as vyavasayatmikabuddhi
jnana-yoga; the buddhi in samadhi is well trained.
Sri Ramanuja says that samadhi is manas:
samadhiyate asmin atma-jnanam: atma-jnanam ti
samadhir manah. Again samadhi is atmavalokanam ; it
is Prajna pratisthita; it is atmanyevatmana tosah
which in the words of Sri Ramanuja is the final
point of jnana-yoga jnananisthakastha.
Samadhi state is the state identical with the
sthitaprajna-state described by the Gita…Thus there
are four finds of sthita-prajnas : (1) enjoyer in
the self alone having renounced all desires: (2) the
muni who has renounced love and hate, sorrow and joy
in possession, free from fear of loss and anger;
(3) one who loves or and hates none, and one who
rejoices not in honour or dejected by dishonour or
humiliation; and (4) one who is self controlled and
observes as witness the movements of the gunas
withdrawing his consent to them.

But a more interesting meaning is given to samadhi
when it is said to be the state of considering Karma
as Brahman: brahma-karma-samadhi. (IV.24)

Nor should we forget that this dynamic samadhi is a
state corresponding to the later development of the
transference of the workings of the organs and mind
to the Divine within. The transition or exchange is
facilitated by the doctrine of service and sacrifice
and offering to the Divine, through absolute
detachment in respect of all fruits: matkarmakrt
matparamo madbhaktah samgavarjitah nirvairah
sarvabhutesu…and manmana bhava madbhaktah madyaji
mam namaskuru… By these offerings there is the
state of Brahma-bhutatva, the filling up of the
individual by the Divine – a descent of the Divine.
This close interpenetration of the consciousness of
the individual and the Divine has closely to be
attached and the individual keeping up his
dependence-consciousness firmly and abidingly, must
see the Divine in all and all in the Divine: as
sarvantaratma and the sarva and
sarvesa, jagannivasa.

Thus we find that ultimately our normal
understanding is transcended. Our actions become
more and more divine or divinely worked or worked by
the Divine the more they are offered by devotion on
our part and we do our allotted work with faith and
absolute one-pointedness, ekagrata – which is the
focus of inner self towards the Divine. Devotion
strongly tinctured by sacrifical love for the Divine
transforms the activities and fits us for the great
vision of the Divine which is a grace-event, not
something got at by force of askesis or even by
detachment or sheer rectitude of conduct. Divine
pratyaksa is different from Yoga pratyaksa –for the
Divine pratyaksa is supra comic and supramental
whereas the yoga-pratyaksa is yet of the order of
the individual and natural because it is yet of the
instruments of buddhi, manas, and subtle indriyas.
Their subtle possiblities become manifest when the
individual become detached from the movements of
prakrti, from selfish and desireful actions, in one
word, sattvika. The siddhis are of this order of
Nature. But Divine Siddhi is of the Supermental
order even as Divine Pratyaksa granted by Sri Krsna
to Sri Arjuna was.

This obviously must be at the back of the concept of
samadhi as the consciousness which is of the Sama,
the Supreme Divine which grants us samadarsana,
salokya, sayujya, sarupya and in one word samatva.

Our true jnana-yoga starts with this realisation of
the Purusottama beyond the Aksara- kutastha purusa
and the Ksara pursusa, the individual souls in their
transmigratory cycle described in the XVth chapter
of the Gita. Some yogas stop at the Aksara beyond
the Ksara, but it is necessary to pass beyond to the
Highest–the Purusottama, who supports
everything–both the jagat and the ajagat,
the indweller in all hearts and who is
all-pervading. The aim of the Yoga is to see the
Divine in all and all in the Divine, and know the
Divine to be the power and perfection within all
things, activities and manifestations. This is the
perfect knowledge that it is a fruit of surrender to
the Adya purusa–tam eva sadyam purusam prapadye
yatah pravrttih prasrtapurani: freed from all
egoism or self-estimations–nirmanamohah–freed from
subjection to the faults of association and contact
jitasamgadosah–ever-established in
oneself-adhyatmanityah-turned away from all desires–vinivrttakamah–
and beyond the polarities of pleasure and pain &
etc., a procedure that makes one a krtakrtya, one
established in Yoga. The adyapurusa is the
Purusottama.

The Bhagavad Gita is a wonderful work which gives in
a nutshell the central teaching of the Upanisads and
rightly may Lord Krsna claim that he is the
vedantakrt and Vedavit and or also that all Vedas
teach him alone.

This is the samadhi that is tranceless, because it
is a product of jnana and not a psychological
effortful path. The great Divine author of the Gita
rightly stresses that with effort the Yogins seek to
see him with their jnana-caksus, purified vision as
at the back of all activities of the mind and the
sense-organs yatanto yoginascainam
pasyantyatmanyavasthitam. But this is available
through the acceptance of the Grace of the Divine
who is to be surrendered to, offered to, and
submitted to so that one becomes a willing
instrument of the Divine. This is the message and
the final word of the Gita sarvadharman
parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja.16 Sri
Venkatanatha insists upon this divine factor in
Yoga, following the great instruction of the
Kenopanisad, who therefore becomes the guiding and
leading principle in human conduct and action. The
divinisation of man becomes possible only when the
Divine is the transformer and leader and seer or one
who grants the divine vision which obviously is
superior to the yogic vision.

Sri Aurobindo writes “Trance is a way of escape–the
body is made quite, the physical mind is in a state
of torpor, the inner consciousness is left free to
go on with its experience. The disadvantage is that
trance become indispensable and that the problem of
waking consciousness is not solved it remains
imperfect.”

This apparently is the reason why Sri krsna insists
upon a new methodology of divine union in waking
consciousness itself which happens through prapatti,
surrender completely and without reservation,
mental, moral, or physical. The earlier Yoga
insisted upon the individual renouncing and
rejecting and repressing the sense and the samkalpa
and the mind and finally the buddhi which are all
the formations of the mind and finally the buddhi
which are all the formations of the eight fold
prakrit. The New Yoga insists upon offering every
one of these organs and samkalpa and mind and buddhi
to the Divine which would thereafter become the
property of the Divine directly and supported by Him
alone. This is the bhara-samarpana of the
Sri Vaisnava doctrine of Ramanuja and the alvars.
The burden of conducting the unequal battle of
sense-samkalpa and Mind with Nature is thereafter
God’s alone: to bear, to preserve, to transform and
transmute the individual in all his triple parts too
is His alone. The earlier Yoga emphasised the
control of the citta or its concentration as the
means of realisation of the Brahman or Isvara Self,
and was afraid of the siddhis or temptations offered
by the powers of the prakrti- the threefold
enchantress of the souls, purusas. “Be brave ; be
bold; be not afraid” is the call of the Teacher. In
the New Yoga of the Divine Lord we have the call to
accept the Teacher and to follow faithfully Him, and
no dangers and temptations can affect us.

Sri Aurobindo makes a further modification, in the
Yoga of Sri Krsna. The descent of the Divine within
the individual happens when the individual has
completely offered himself in all his parts,
sarvabhavena. But this descent itself is a
divine unfoldment within the individual which
happens in a series of steps. One begins to feel
the general presence; then a voice from within
becomes heard, which the more it is listened to
becomes recognised as the voice eternal, of the real
guide and light and leader – the guru in the heart
or rather speaking through the heart, the centre of
audition for the psychic being. Then visions of the
inner master and the worlds may intervene–all of
which only intimate His omnipervading
characteristic. The mind becomes calm and quite,
the senses being to be irresponsive to the objects
of desire, but in another sense seem to be seized
with a new vitality which is not of the individual .
Then comes a stage when the individual psyche is
just a witness of the processes ; and more and more
confidence and belief in the inner values becomes
possible. The individual is discriminative as these
judgements are of the witness-level and do not
hamper the activities and movements of the Divine
there is no difficulty. The quiet sure power of the
Divine takes up the individual’s being wholly and
entirely but almost it appears watches carefully for
the manifestations of the lower forces and powers of
the material body and the psychic ego so as to
rectify them or turn them inward. But the real
transformation starts when the Divine is felt to
come into the city of the individual to be the
master and no longer a mere guide. The alvars have
described this movement. The Pancaratra has
intimated this descent of the omnipervasive Divine
as antaryamin during sadhana to take a personal
possession of the offered soul. This is a special
descent of Grace. It is at this point that Sri
Aurobindo envisages the formation of a new mind –
the supermind. The alvars have intimated that the
power of Brahman–Mother Sri the supreme power of the
Divine , who is eternally inseparable conjoined with
the Divine, descends also into the individual’s
heart and is infact the Daya, the Love, that the
individual feels within, which being inexpressible
he cannot adequate-ly thank the Divine, She is
called the purusakar–the agency of
transformation of acceptance of realisation or
release-mukti . It is to this Mother that
one has to surrender in order to gain the
brahma-sayujya.

Sri Aurobindo points out that the particularised
minds, and even the buddhi which is capable of being
merely a mirror of the purusa and the source of
illusive or ignorant identification must be and are
replaced by the formation of a new mind, which
includes the double function of perceiving and
acting jnana and aisvarya and virya. No longer is it
a particularised mind but a universalised mind and
true mind–the Supermind. This is not a state but an
instrument of the divinised consciousness, which
perceives the Divine or Atman in all and all in the
Atman, which combines the power and puissance of the
Divine. It is not of the level of overmind,
intuition of even the higher mind which for the Yogi
typify only the more purified statuses of the mind,
ahamkara, buddhi which have more tenuousnesses and
clarities, but yet are of the Ignorance or
apara-prakrti. We must first develop the vision
by the psyche and then the supermind.

There is of course the possibility of considering
that the direct soul-sight-atmajnana itself can
know. But then the difficulty in one arising from
its inherent incapacity at present to act directly.
The soul-consciousness, atma-caitanya,
illumines itself is svayamprakasa, but is
svasmai prakasa also but not capable of
illumining the world. Subjective omniscience it gets
but not the living objective omniscience. This is
capable of being achieved individual’s
‘consciousness’ (dharmabhuta-jnana) becomes
unconditioned, universal. Trance which is necessary
in the former case becomes unnecessary, for it is
normal for the Divine to work in and through the
senses and the mind or the forms of Ignorance in a
luminous creative way. They are no obstructions to
its workings, though obstructions to the unevolved
mind or soul.

Obviously the supermind cannot be considered to be
identical with the dharma-bhuta-jnana of the
Visistadvaita1 for
its undoubtedly infinite in its free state but it
requires for its free function no limitation
whatsoever from the Ignorance or the body of the
prakrtic-nature. In a suddha-sattva body it
is infinite. Indeed we see in yoga this
expansiveness of the dimensions of this
dharma-bhuta-jnana which is contracted to the
minimum in lowest kinds of souls and gradually
becomes bigger and bigger as they rise in evolution
to higher forms. The dharma-bhuta-jnana is a
quality of the soul, a dharma or function of the
soul. Supermind is a product of the Higher prakrti
or the suddha-sattva prakrti known as the
Mother-Consciousness, the Eternal power of the
Divine, an instrument shaped by Her even like the
other indriyas namely manas, jnana and
karmendriyas, which have served the lower levels of
evolution. This is the pivotal conception of Sri
Aurbindo which makes his thought distinct and
unique. The Mother herself is four-fold in her
operations or personalities or functions. The
Supermind as an organ corresponding to the cosmic
consciousness is universalised integral
consciousness or for the purpose of perceiving the
integral One in the many even as our mind is the
organ for the perception of the disjuncted or
disparate parts of the whole which laboriously it
seeks through reason, anumana, to recollect or unite
or synthesise.

The function of Samadhi is to make for this
development of the new organ of
knowing-being-feeling-acting universally but by
itself it is nothing. It establishes a contact which
might be established much better perhaps by other
methods of prapatti and sacrifice understood in the
adhyatmic-sense and fullness as expounded by the
Rahasyatrayasara of venkatanatha and
Synthesis ofYoga of Sri Aurobindo.

The discovery of the Supermind is the special
contribution of Sri Auribindo to Yoga and the most
excellent and important link in the chain of higher
evolution. It not only points out that evolutions
is happening but must happen so that a superman is
not merely a dream, nor even that the superman is
but a jivan-mukta waiting for the Videhamukti
till the sancita karma works itself out, who
till then is acting in a detached manner in the
world cognized by him as a dream, phantasmagoria,
like Vasistha of the Yoga Vasistha.

To the Superman the world is not an unreality, it
becomes more significant rather than less
significant for the play of the Divine
Consciousness. His absorption in the Divine proceeds
to express or manifest the Divine in everything, for
everything is verily the Divine. His
identity-knowledge becomes direct and universal and
true, not merely causal.

In a sense we find that this Vijnana consciousness
is not a mere consciousness like the so’ham-consciousness
or tattvam asi consciousness or sarvam
khalvidam-consciousness of the Mahavakyas to
which the Minor Upanishads grant a very important
place but also the status of a plane and organ. To
have disabused yogins and vedantins alike of the
view that identity-consciousness is but the nature
of the soul or self is the greatest work done by Sri
Auribindo. The Divine is incomprehensivebly superior
to this consciousness. Sri Aurobindo admits that a
direct mergence with the Divine is possible , but it
is perhaps not necessary, perhaps never really
attained, for it is the truth of the Divine that is
missed and no seeker really is permitted by the
Divine to miss the truth of the Manifestation of the
Divine in His supreme multilplicity. Andham tamah
pravisanti avidyayam upasate tato bhuya iva te
vidyayam ratah || Isa Up.

Every great mystic almost feels a perennial interest
to serve and lead others in the world before he
leaves for other worlds. It is clear also from the
Minor Upanisads that they counsel two types of
evolution, the gradual krama-mukti and the
direct bird-path which are known by the names of
Vamadeva and Suka.1
The former
covers slowly and painfully but none the less
effectively the whole process and categories of the
Whole till it comes to realise the One Brahman who
is the self of oneself and all, when one lives and
moves and has his being in Brahman in a state of
complete unity even in His manifestation. The
Suka-path is the path of orientation by means of an
Idea which transforms the entire view and being,
flies over the entire gamut of details to the
Ultimate and from thence descends to understand the
place of the details in the context of the whole.
There is consummateness of the divine consiousness
from the beginning for one has surrendered to the
Ultimate at the very start and then the Divine or
Ultimate takes care of the individual and his
evolution, transformation or whatever is needed for
the release. Though it is a long and narrow path of
avyabhicara-buddhi, to use the expression of
the Gita, yet it is the lighted path.

Human effort consummates itself in the Vamadeva
path, the Divine energy consummates itself in the
Suka-path; the former is the path of toil and
tears; latter is the path of joy and delight and
fearlessness. But there is in experience no such
pure paths: human effort is assisted by the Divine
Grace; Divine Grace compels and demands human
co-operation: this is the essence of the liberty of
the individual.

The Bhagavad Gita as treated by the Masters on the
Path like Sri Ramanuja fully reveals this Suka-path
or the Path of light, which is easy to tread, for
one walks under the guiding and protecting wings of
the Lord Sri Krsna Himself - the Purusottama, the
owner of the Vehicle which is the Suparna-the
Celestial Bird. There is an important aspect of the
Supreme Principle of Surrender as enunciated by the
Agama. The saranagati is said to be of five
or six stages such as anukulya samkalpah,
pratikulyasya varjanam, gotriptva varanam,
mahavisvasam, atmaniksepam and karpanyam. The soul
has by these six steps to attain the complete or
integral surrender.

The study of the nature of the Divine Descent
(avatar) gives an interesting and suggestive (though
by no means non-ingenious) example of the Divine
responsive surrender (causal or effectual, I shall
not attempt to define). The Vamana-Trivikrama avatar
as the alvars are never tired of repeating reveals
the anukulya samkalpa of the Divine who has in one
supreme act of self-giving assume the sovereignty of
the world and prepared for the surrender of the
souls to Him. The next avatar of Parasurama is a
remarkable unsurpassed attempt to remove the
pratikula, the forces that are against the Divine
and thus the Divine himself has removed the
conditions in the environment which prevented the
renunciation of the obstructive forces. Dasaratha
Rama shows the election by God of man’s body–God
needs man just as man needs God– this is the
goptrtva-varanam of God. Sri Krsna exemplifies the
Mahavisvasa– the faith in the soul’s possibility.
Remember the extraordinary behaviour of the
desciples such as Bhisma and Drona, Arjuna and
others. If we again remember the faith in the
possibility of the soul at last yeilding to the
Divine appeal to submit to be transformed, we can
see that Sri Krsna reveals predomidantly the will to
faith in man and the soul. Such faith in man alone
makes man gain the mahavisvasa of the sarana. There
is no doubt at all that if we concede, as Jayadeva
does the avatarhood of Buddha a new light begins to
be thrown on the principle of self-annihilation or
sunya taught by Him. It is the Divine atma-niksepa
and love (karpanya) that abolishes Himself so that
the individual souls may be utterly saved. God’s
divine descents thus fulfil the very conditions that
the soul has to fulfil in its upward ascent.

Samadhi utterly can be possible only when the
Divine and the soul have the same apparatus of
complementary fulfilment so much so the unity
realised is an integral, all-sided, whole some,
synthesis in being, knowledge and delight.

4.12 YOGA PSYCHOLOGY

Itc "I"

In my article on Psycho-physiology in the Minor
Upanisads (Which was part of my work at the Andhra
University in 1929-30)1
I stated that the Mundaka Up. mentions the seven
flames. The RgVeda passage (X.v.6), “The seven wise
ones (dhyanis) fashion seven paths, To one of these
may the distressed mortal come.” The seven wise ones
or rsis refer to the seven rsis of Atri, Bhrgu,
Kutsa, Vasista, Gautama, Kasyapa and Angirassas
(even as the Aitareya Brahmana states it ) and the
seven paths refer to the seven planes and their
corresponding cakras, as each individual according
to his evolution and fitness aspires to the higher
level and path which would fulfil him or liberate
him. Meditation (sanyama) on these centres or
planes (or element representative of the plane)
(these are interchangeable terms according to the
Correspondential realism of the Vedic knowledge
suggested by the upamanas and dhvanis though not
identical terms) – leads to the attainment of
siddhis. The Aitareya Brahmana (I) synthesises the
planes of bhuh, bhuvah, Svar, maha, jana, tapa and
Satya by stating that the respective seer Atri,
Bhrgu, Kutsa, Vasista, Gautama, Kasyapa and Angirasa
see them, and the devas realized by them as
of those planes are stated to be Agni, Vayu, Arka,
Vagisa,Varuna, Indra and Visvedevas. Visvedevah are
equated with Visnu in the opening lines of the same
Brahmana when it states “Agnir vaidevanam avamo
visnuh paramas tad antarena sarva anya devata.”

The six centres or plexuses are identified with
certain elements in Yoga Psychology. Siddhi or
knowledge or power over such elements result from
the control of that centre through meditation, The
aim however is to triumph over the entire process of
subordination. Liberation is the aim of life.
Realization of oneness is also the condition of
freedom. The principle of meditation or dhyana or
samadhi is precisely the attainment of unification
of the organic with the spiritual and the celestial,
the divine powers of seeing (rsis), the divine
powers of power-consciousness (chandas) and the
attainment of oneness with the Divine personalities
(devas). The inner fire Agni, secret in the being of
each individual is to be led steadily through
sacrifice of all that one holds dear and which lead
him to devious ways of sin, to the highest point of
the head (sahasrara cakra). The kudalini-sakti
which is of the form of lightning is to be led
through the knots and united to the crest. The Krsna
Yajur-Veda has the following passages:

(i) Thee, O Agni, fron the lotus

Atharvan pressed out from

The
head of every priest (iv.1. 3)

(ii) Be born noble in the forefront of the
days

Kind
to the kindly, red in the woods,

Bestowing seven jewels in every house

Hath
Agni sat him down as hotr.

Cf.

(iii) Seven are thy kindling sticks, O Agni,

Seven
thy tongues,

Seven
seers, seven dear abodes,

Seven
hotras, seven-fold sacrifice to thee,

Seven
birthplaces with ghee do thou fill.

(A.B.Keith’s
trans.

H.O.S.Vol.19
p.293)

The number seven is significant. But we know that
the Vedic seers also used to mention either three or
five. The principle of trivrtkarana or pancikarana
as the intermixture of elements prior to the
creation may be mentioned. We also know that the
Upanisads were aware of the existence of five fires,
five airs (breaths), five ether, waters etc. This
sometimes leads to varied readings. But what seems
to be intimated is that, according to the Vedic
view, when any element has arisen out of another it
can be described by the same term that had been
applied to the cause. Causes and effects have an
identity and it is possible to designate the cause
by the same word as the effect or vice versa.
Further in organic explanations as in the Upanisads,
mainly yogic or adhyatmika, there is explained the
co-existence of the five elements in integrated
unity.1
The words have to be taken in their yoga
significance rather than in their rudhi.2

The lighting of the three fires or the construction
of the Fire-altar known as the Naciketagni is
explained by Sri Aurobindo as the transformation of
the physical, vital and the mental by the Divine
Will Agni, which is a result of Divine
Grace-knowledge. It is the immortalizing Fire. Fire
always stood for this great process of offering of
oneself to the workings of the Divine Lord. He is
the messenger and the leader of the path. Divine
aspiration or will is Agni. From the point of view
of outer life the building of the fire-altar is a
correspondential, mimetic or symbolic phenomenon or
construction. Truth is triple: It is a cognitive,
conational, affective unity,-saccidananda.

I
should in this connecton also mention the function
of the seven metres (chandamsi), which are also
stated to have the function of measuring out or
granting the appropriate siddhis by leading the
individual to the different respective planes. They
are the mothers, jna-devis, who preserve the several
planes of being in unity. Again the Aitereya
Brahmana gives the clues regarding the Gayatri,
Usni, Anustubh, Brhati, Pankti, Tristubh, Jagati.
(I. i.5): Gayatri grants beauty and knowledge, usni
grants long life, anustubh heaven, brhati wealth and
glory, pankti grants love of sacrifice, tristubh
strength, jagati confers cattle and the viraj metre
grants food.

The sandhyavandan of the Hindus in its nyasa relates
the rsi, karana (chandas), deva and loka
(saptavyahrtis).

The Brahmanas have yet to be fully interpreted from
the adhyatmika point of view which will integrate
the adhibhautika and the adhidaivika aspects. The
writings of Sri Aurobindo (Secret of the Veda, Hymns
to the Mystic Fire), Krishna Prem (Yoga of the
kathopanisad). Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswami, promise
us a rich future. The Yoga approach is necessary
and urgent.

II Brahmacaryatc "II Brahmacarya"

Writing on the relation between Pancaratra and the
Upanisads in the New Indian Antiquary (April-June
1946), I stated the close correspondence between the
Prasna conception of the five Ratris with the
Pancaratra conception and in addition showed there
that Sri Krsna the supreme of the Pancaratra is
stated to have been born in the Five Nights so as to
dispel the darknesses of the Five Nights. One of
the Profound results or fruits of the descent of God
or Avatar is, as Sri Aurobindo has conspicuously
shewn, the upliftment of the stage of evolution of
the plane into which the avatar descends. Each one
of the planes of the physical, vital and the mental
are states of ignorance and though it must be said
that the vital is higher than the physical, the
mental higher than the vital. The description of
the progress of descents or ten avatars is sometimes
ingeniously equated with the evolutionary process.
But the conception remains as the central doctrine
of the Pancaratra and the Lord Teacher of the Gita
emphasises the avatar-secret of His own supreme
Descent into the five nights to release the forces
of light and puissance and grandeur and sovereignty
and Love.

The correlation of
the rayis with ratris is, I then
showed, adopted by Manu in the Manusamhita. There is
however a slight difference between the two
versions. Manu writes:-

It appears that this divergence between Manu and
Pippalada requires elucidation. I have no doubt that
the Pippalanda-version is correct, unless we
consider that Sukla paksa is the waxing period of
Candra or the Moon and cannot be the period of the
solar fulness. Not at all a bad or valid reason.
The Births of Sri Krsna and Sri Rama, the Lunar and
the Solar deities so to speak as I have shewn in the
article in the New Indian Antiquary in the five
ratris and the five ahanis respectively makes me
decide against the variation of Manu.

I
am further fortified in my reasoning by the internal
evidence in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the
works devoted to the Solar and the Lunar lines so to
speak.

In the Srimad Ramayana Sri Rama is instructed to go
to Sugriva by Kabandha and make acquaintance with
him and not with Valin. The point is as Sri Valmiki
states it Sugriva is the son of Surya whereas Valin
is Indra’s son (indu, Indra being almost
identical since Soma is the favourite drink of
Indra). There are other reasons of corresponding
lot of losing their wives which would evoke
sympathy. But Sugriva with whom friendship is
sought, is Suryaputra. The unity between them
became proverbial ‘ramasugrivayor aikyam’ is stated
to be the most perfect unity that all souls can seek
if devoted. The lunar power was slain, both Valin
and Ravana.1

In the Mahabharata Arjuna, Indra’s son, is the
companion, bosom friend of Sri Krsna, and Karna, the
Bhanuja, son of Surya is the foe. The alliance here
with the lunar by Sri Krsna of the five nights is
obviously a mystery to many, but to those who see
the pattern of dharma, in both cases, will
observe that both the night and the day have to be
governed by a higher and supremer consciousness, the
Divine. Sri Rama and Sri Krsna are the Divine, in
the double forms suitable to the dharma which
is to be established and the adharmawhich is
to be dethroned and annihilated.

The importance of brahmacarya need not be
overstressed. Brahmacarya implies the preservation
of the vital-fluid, the prana in the form of ap,
subjectively speaking without misusing it. Misuse
consists in using this vital fluid during the
day-times (understood in the triple manner of
uttarayana, suklapaksa and day-times). There is thus
correspondance and connection established by
Prasnopanisad. Brahmacarya does not entail absolute
celibacy but celibacy or self-restraint and proper
use in the nighttimes. Sri Krsna is sometimes said
to be the Nitya-Brahmacarin- the eternal or ever
celibate, though a perfect grhastha. This is because
he was like gods, pitrs and men observing all the
three daytimes in perfect celibacy. There is of
course more in all these mystic suggestion. It is at
once a guide to the ordinary man to ascend to the
levels of spiritual consciousnesses typified by the
pitrs and the devas, they are at least not so much
the dead and the divine alone. The purpose of the
Pranavopasana is the preservation of the prana in
all seasons and for all creatures, gods, fathers and
men. This is the reason why the Prasnopanisad takes
the disciple-questioner-to the meditation on the
Pranava and the use of the Pranava.

Thus there is an integral connection between the
several planes, which is to be achieved by the
pranavopasana, the metaphysical basis of which is
stated clearly in the first prasna itself. We know
from the Yoga literature in the Upanishads
themselves that Ida and Pingala are also called the
Candranadi and the Suryanadi and the Susumna is the
Agni. It is clear that there can be seen
personality-differences between the different types
of men as to whether they are solar-dominant or
lunar-dominant and to both the Susumna is the
integrating force and thus in its proper direction
in righteousness and sinlessness alone there is
found to be salvation. The mystic symbolism is not
merely a convenient fiction but also a realistic
attempt to integrate the several layers of
individual consciousness and being with the cosmic
and universal and eternal Truths and consciousness
and Intelligences and Powers of the Divine.

The avatars of Sri Rama and Sri Krsna have the
respective pancalaksana of the five
day-times or pranas and five rayis
respectively.

4.13 BUDDHIST AND YOGA PSYCHOLOGY

The development of Vedantic psychology is
independent of any external influence in general.
But it has been conceded by most people that the
influence of Buddhistic practices and methods of
attainment of ecstacy which lasted at least for a
millenium could not have left Vedantic thought
without influencing it .Indeed the most important
revulsion against the Buddhistic practices was the
fact of the repudiation by Sri Sankara of everything
that savoured of the buddhistic yoga.. His limiting
idea has been the practice of hearing, thinking and
meditating on the highest truths expressed by the
mahavakyas. This may be said to have been the
strict method followed by the Upanisads which
counsel the Buddhism also constantly instilled this
may be said to have

Been the strick method followed by the Upanisads
which counsel the hearing, the thingking about and
the meditation on the law of Buddha. However it
happened that later Buddhism developed the principle
askesis and ascetism and began to built up quite a
profoundly interesting psychological structure of
planes of counciousness ; and these have their
counterparts in the serveral systems of meditation.
It became a psychological undertaking on the part of
schools of Yoga, whether purely intellectual, or
physiological is devotional, to explain the several
planes of consciousness. This meant generally
speaking that during the great interval between the
decline of Brahmanistic practices and the decline of
Buddhism and jainism, there had been happening great
experiments in the psychological sphere. It was very
evident, thanks to the activities of jainism which
was more and more concerned in the development of
that final peace and happiness through its
scientific interest in nature, there had come into
being lot of literature concerning the
physiological, astronomical and psychical life of
man.

The relationship between the jaina and the Yoga
philosophy had yet to be clearly understood. In the
meanwhile there has come into being a great amount
of literature which shows the indebtedness and
correspondences between the Buddhist and Yoga
Philosophy. It has been well-established that the
Patanjala-yoga-sutras could not belong to the
post-christian era. Rather it must be placed early
enough in the 2nd century
B.C. This seems to be right since the
systamatisation of the Yoga literature must have
started considerable early so as to prescribe the
minimum conditions which are necessary either for a
theistic or an atheistic preparation for the
mystical or religious experience. If occult training
means the fitting of oneself to experience. If
occult training means the fitting of oneself to
experience the inward strength and possibilities of
the human being, then we have in the Yoga-sutras the
absolutely minimum conditions of moral and physical
and vital preparation, as seen in the control of
mind, (citta), prana(pranayama) and yama and
niyama. For the theist the Isvara-pranidhana; for
the atheist this Isvara can well be exchanged for
the Guru, the Teacher of the Doctrine, the Dhamma,
the Marga or the Dharma. Thus we find that in these
Yoga Sutras we do not have the highly elaborate
satcakra-nirupana, which is such an important
part of the Tantrika and Pancaratra literature and
the Yoga-Upanisads and other Upanisads. The
Hatha-yoga posses were well known but only other
Upanisads. The Hatha-yoga poses were well known but
only the meditation pose of siddha or padma was
counselled as the sthira-sukhasanam. The
meditational poses of Buddha are those belonging to
these types alone, mainly the Pasma-pose.

Pranayama was also a part of the practice of all
mystics and occultists. Thus the Yogavacara
Masual contains the following statement.

“O Bhikkus, under this rule, a
Bhikku, one who was truly felt the fread of the
stream of becoming, goes to a solitary forest, to
the foot of a tree or to a lonely place far from
thew haunts of men, sits down cross-legged and holds
the body straight, Setting mindfullness in front of
him, with Nibbana as his goal, not wavering nor
turning thought to other things, he breathes in
mindfully and mindfully breathes out. As he draws in
a long breath he knows” Along draw in;” as he
breathes out a long breath he knows “ along breath I
breathe out.: As he draws in a quich breathes out a
quich breath he knows, “A quich breath I breathe
out.”

This practice pf ‘mindful breathing in and breathing
out’ is a deliberate process of breath-control.
This may be compared with the pranayam which
comprises of three stages, Recaka, Puraka and
Kumbhaka, which are also timed in the ratio of
1,1,2. The Mantra used normally when in breathing or
out-breathing or retaining is the famous Gayatri.

There are variations of the pranayama, and the
Buddhist variation merely suggests that general
principle of conscious control of breath. Thus in
the preamble of the Manual of the Mystic it
is written

“Knowing the body in all the
parts, throughly grasping the true nature of this
way, that is, the breathing which starting from the
tip of the nose, passes downwards to the navel and
the out-breathing which rises from the navel and
passes up wards to the tip of the nose, and nature
of their rise and fall. He fixes his sight on the
tip of the nose and grasps the truth that he sees
the tip of the nose the sight-mind firmly in the
heart the thing he attanding to ; such is the
preparation or preamble” (p.1).

The pose and others are clearly envisaged in the
Gita V, 27, and VIII, 12-13. It may be clear from
the above description and the descriptions of the
process of pranayama. The detailed process of
pranayama as to how and by what nose should be
inhalation take place, whether the exhilation should
take place before the deep breath is taken, and by
what nose whould the exhilation take place or
whether the process should be revereded between the
noses are not at clear from the Buddhistic accounts
Obviously this pranayama like the yama and niyama
are considered to be just purificatory accessories
as Yoga also deems them to be. It is the mind that
cause bondage.

It is the states of contemplation, concentration,
and absorption that reveal the closeness of the
Dhyana of the Yoga with the jhana of the Buddhist.
There are four stages of this contemplation or
dhyana, all mental in nature, and involving no
physical or vital process but whichnevertheless have
been sufficiently controlled so as not to interfer
with the smoothness of the process of mind control.
These form the five stages in all. Pratyahara,
dharana, dhyana, and samadhi of Yoga are repeated as
savicara, nirvicara, savikalpaka and
nirvikalpaka. The process of the first Jhana
according to Mrs. Rhys Davids is as follows :

When aloof from sensuous ideas,
aloof from evil ideas, he enters into and abides in
the First Jhana, wherein attention is applied and
sustained (sa-vitakka,sa-vicara), where is born of
solitude and filled with zest and pleasant emotion :
when next, from the subsiding of attention applied
and sustained, he enters into and abides in the
Second Jhana, which is in ward, tranquilizing of the
mind, self-contained and uplifted from the working
of attention, is born of concentration, fullof Zestr
and pleasurable emotion; when next, through the
quenching zest, he abides with equal mind, mindful
and disering, experiencing in the body that pleasure
where of the Ariyans declare; ‘ Happy doth he abide
with even lucid mind, and so enters into the abides
in Thirs jhana: When next, by putting away both
pleasant and painful emotion, by dying out of the
joy and misery he used to know, he enters into and
abides in Fourth Jhana, that utterly pure lucidity
and indifference of min, wherein is neither
happiness nor unhappiness- this is the training of
the higher consciousnes.”1

Thus the process is
not very much different from the process adumbraed
by the Yoga-sutras which counsel the nirodha of the
citta. The attainment of this highest consciousness
reveals as interesting feature. There is no feeling
of merging into any higher being or entity or state.

“The
Jhanin seems to be always master of himself and
self-possessed, even in ecstacy, even to the
deliberate falling into and emerging (as by a
spiritual alarum-clock) from trance. There is a
synergy about his jhana, combined with an absence of
any reference whatever to a merging or melting into
something greater, that for many may reveal defect,
but which is certainly a most interesting and
significant difference.”2

There is here at this state what may be called the
realisation the self-nature as self-contained, and
the description of this fourth Jhana state clearly
indicates the same. This is the atma-saksatkara
state.

“With consciousness thus
concentrated (inFourth Jhana) made pure,
translucent, cleared, void of defilement made
supple, wieldy, firm, imperturbable, he applies and
bends over the mind to knowledge and vision.”3

The siddhis attained by a mind thus concentrated and
having achieved saksatkara of itself are almost
identical with what are stated in the yoga. But
these powers are considered by Buddha himself to be
errors of the soul.

“I see danger in the practice of
these accomplishments ; loathe and abhor and am
ashamed of them.”says Buddha.4

But the mastery of these accomplishments and
renunciation of these is self-mastery. That such is
also the view of Yoga can clearly be seen when the
Yoga asks the seer to pass beyond the sattvaquality
and know himself as undefined.

The main feature of siddhis or iddhis seems to be
that they are yet the activities of the vijnana or
sattva, and as such limiting the pure atta or satta
or purusa nature. The samkhyan concept of Buddhi is
similar to the concept of Vijnana in Buddhism.

“To him, Bhikkus, who lives intent
on enjoyment in things that tend to enfetter us,
there will be descent of vinnana.and where vinnana
gains a footing, there is descent of mental and
bodily life…for this nutriment vinnana is the cause
of our taking birth and coming again to be.”5

The Samkhya Karika 20 and 21 clearly point out that
mere contemplation of matter by spirit is enough to
start the process of which the first sign is seen in
the Buddhi from which the whole host of
modifications take place. And we find that it is
true to say that “Conditioned by contact arises
feeling : what one feels, one percevives; and what
one perceives one thinks about ; what one thinks
about, one is obsessed withal.”6 so
also the Anguttara Nikaya “ I say cetana is action;
thinking one acts by deed, word and thought”.7

The process by which this attachment to
sense-objects or objects that are other than the
self, is certainly throught Yoga or Shyana Jhana.
The senses have to be yoked, which leads to the
yoking of the mind, which is turn leads to the
yoking of the Buddhi or vinnana and finally to the
yoking of all change or process. This results in
the Nirvana, the Kaivalya, or Samsdhi.

The soul is freed utterly from the conditions of and
dependence on matter and realises that the world of
objects is other than itself unatta, unsubstantial
so far as it is concerned. Its really it finds
finally to rest not in the attainment of objects of
the senses or even in the attainment of powers which
are shewn really to belong to the material order.
Buddha of course foes not positively hint at this
supreme state of Nirvana to be anything other than
the state of Voidness of objectivity or subjectivity
too. It is quite a matter for speculation. What he
denied was positively the existance of material
objectivity and impermanence of objects and not the
self (atman).8

Mrs Rhys Davids inher ‘Sakya or Buddhist
Origins’ goes further and specially analyses the
concept of Jhana. Jhanashe defines as a
formula-produced higher state. In this constant
repetition of the mantra or formula, which is
mystic, consists the induction of supernormal or
abnormal states of consciousness. But whilst this
jhana may be considered to be something akin to the
experience of Tennyson when he repeated his own
name, yet in the higher concept of Jhana what really
transpired was a high state of tension of the mind,
the dhi. It is a kind of musing, solitary
experience of special kind. This view is of the
svetasvatara Up. (I.14) and Maitri Up. (VI.18).
This is different from meditation, for, it is a kind
of inner concentration. This is preceded by dharana
which is the nagative exercise of arresting outer
experience. The samadhi is the realization of the
highest concentration of inner concentration. It is
the supersaturated state of tension so to speak. In
early Buddhism says Mrs. Rhys Davids, Jhana is a
deliberate explicity putting off (pahana) of
applied and sustained thought. What is left is
sati and indifference (upekkha), it is a state
of tabula rasa, and is a waiting to learn. Thus it
is a state of what might be called dynamic
recipience on the one hand and absolute quiescence
on the other, of what Mrs.Rhys Davids calls ‘alert
receptiveness’. This is the fourth Jhana. Thus we
may find some correspondence between the fourth
Jhana and the state of utter reception which
excludes all outside experience which is what we
find to be the state of dhyana on the Supreme or
Iswara pranidhana. But as pointed our by
Mrs.Rhys Davids, whilst we may accept a common form
as the origin of both the dyuana of Yoga and Jhana
of the Buddhistic school, their only identity or
similarity consist in their musing rather than on
what they muse. The object of Buddhist Jhana is not
clear though many such as Dr, Helier see it be
moksa, (vimutti). This is not the Vedic view where
the object of dhyana in God or Brahma-sampatti
itself. (p. 167). “Both in sakyan Jhana and in
yoga, the process of concentration sets out with
the individual, the man, the solitary aspirant. But
as soon as we touch on attainment, the values
alter. In Buddhist jhana, the man vanishes, we are
left with his mind only, purged,emptied to a state
of ‘purity’ indifference and mindfulness”. And we
hear nothing of any object partly or wholly won
beyond the mental state itself. But in Yoga, the
Yogin, the man, is in full view from first to last,
and there is no doubt about what is sought. It is
the man and not his mind only that is before us, the
man breaking his bars and bond, waking in strength
and fearlessness, winning absorption in to a vision
of the Atman in him, who also is that Atman.” In
the opinion of Mrs. Rhys Davids then we find that
the most important earnestness of Buddha got
blotted out or blurred in the buddhist schools. For
it is the most recurring aim of man in himself to
surpass his limitations, the man in travail seeks
to be the Man the Absolute, the That. This tendency
Buddhism gains hold in the ZenBuddhism or the
Dhyana-cult of Buddhism “ In ZenBuddhism or the
Dhyana-cult of Buddhism “In Zen, jhana regains that
cventral well-spring of the man .his nature, his
objective which was in Yoga but which became blurred
and lost in sakya “ (p. 177). In so far as Buddhism
ceased to be realistic and sought epistemological
idealism as its truth, its concerned or rather its
predominating fault appeared , fault which Sankara
and Ramanuja and other Vedantins had vigorously to
counter, the fault of exalting mind over the knower,
the man the Self. The tragedy that befell the
practice of dhyana was that it became not a musing
on the self or the Man that was identical with or
indwelling in all but on mere mind-control. Yoga
in Patanjala-darsana, and the Anguttara’s (II. 195)
definition of Jhana mean something very identical,
just the control of citta (emotive or out going
mind) or an appurtenant thereof-citta-pari-suddhyanga.

The mystical experience of a ‘more’ which is
achieved by the musing is however the central fact
about Yoga in Vedanta. In Yoga of Patanjali as well
as in Samkhya it appears that Mukti or kaivalya or
mere isolation from matter is the object. In
Buddhism according to ancient Sakya, the aim is to
create utter vacuity, which in later Buddhism
resulted a state of emptiness of all existence, a
pure mind-purification.

The nature of the will is represented not by
tendencies of mind to activities, cittavratti but
rather by the inhibitionary power that stops all
such movement. In Psychology what is more important
is the power to create or restraint. Or more
properly greatest will power to create or restrain.
The words such as tanha, chanda, kama, asa
(longing), kratu, sankalpa, do to a certain
extent reveal the conative aspect but the words
viriya, vayama and padhama refer to
energy and effort which may therefore be closely
linked up with will. Will is the power to do , but
not all power to do can be will. Will is sometimes
cannot by Udaya and Bhava, the will to bring forth
something, will however is not completely
expalined by the terms mere desire or craving or
longing or wven the will to do or create, for these
activities may well belong to the instinctive
drive. On the other hand, will is in one definite
sense a conscious activity not a mere thought ; it
is a choice of the better, varam, The psychology of
will is the fact of choice or decision of the better
cource of action dictated by the most adequate
choice of ideal rather than strength of tendencies
or pull or even achievements limited by movement.
Will thus involves planned activity. It is yoga of
will that we have in the primary fact which involves
a twofold activity of nirodha of all normal
activities of all tendencies, of breath, of posture,
and regulation of all according to the relationship
to volitional in Veda according to the highest
inward aim. The word ‘cetana’ though mainly
thinking involves volition in Veda according to
Mrs. Rhys Davids, and the relationship to volitional
action is all that is referred to by involving
thought. But above all, will is developed as
negative or restraint leading to sthita-prajnatva or
vacuum of being, which is the only means to
discover the real nature of the self of reality or
existence void of its modifications. It is true
that the buddhistic employment of will is almost
identical with the place where the creation of real
entities is stated. There is in most creative
activities no clear scope for the fullest employment
of will as such in mystic or religious concentrate
on any object. This positive aspect of varanam
is used in Pancaratra philosophy as an important
ingredient of Prapatti or self-surrender . Those
who hold that self-surrender does not mean anything
more than abandonment of will, will be surprised to
find that the fourth is the varanam of the
object or the Choice which is a positive election of
the end, comparable to the svayam-varam of the
ancient princesses. This is the only place where we
find that volition1 or
varanam has the positive aspect fully
inculcated. Thus when Mrs. Rhys Davids says that
words for will are absent in the East whereas they
are available in Herbrew and Aramaic and Greek, we
have demut.(sakya: p .76).

Thus we find that will is characterised by the
endeavour to choose the better course. It may, and
in fact it always does, involve two processes which
may be simultaneous or successive, the negative
nirodha of the avara, the election of the para, the
one a continuous checking of the mental activities
of all kinds, and the other the contemplation or
musing on the supreme self of all and oneself. The
one without the other is mere abstraction. In one
sense the two-fold counsel o following sambhuti and
vinasa in the Isavasyopanisad, refers to this
restraint of the mental activities which obstruct or
destroy the integrity of the being or obstruct the
unfoldment of the nature of the self, the Becoming
to be, or the begetting or causing to arise of the
Divine or the Man or the More, which can well be
called the birth or sambhava, or samghuti.
Thus the word ‘will’ is connoted by the word
‘bhava’.

In one sense all activity that is consciously chosen
leading up to achievement of an end is clearly a
matter of will. That the will is not a kind of
activity like thought or, even for that matter,
feeling, is clear, for it is the fact about the
individual personality. Its exercise is continuous
and sustained whether for or against, that is , in
inhibition as well as in inhibition as well as In
projection, in destruction as well as in creation,
in movement as in rest.

1. Anukulyasya sankalpah
pratikulyasya varjanam,

Raksisyatiti visvaso gotrptva
varanam tatha,

Atmaniksepa karpanye sadvidha
saranagatih. (Ahir.Bud.Sam. 37.18)

Here we have
sankalpa,varjanam,visvasa, varanam and
niksepa as five equivalent processes or will, or
progressive reenforcements to the will.

4.14 A STUDY IN THE MYSTIC AND RELIGIOUS TYPES OF

PERSONALITY AND YOGA

Experience, as has been well remarked by Prof. James
Ward, is that which has been experimented upon by
an expert. The expert in this case, is the mystic or
religious seer, and our deductions must be based on
their experiences.

There are two personality-types, the mystical and
the religious. Religions are made or rather founded
by the one, whereas the struggles for freedom,
liberation or liberty are made by the other.
Religious consciousness is typically one of
surrender to whatever is conceived to be the highest
Person, Principle or System. The feeling of
dependence is its characteristic feature. The aim of
transcendence is there but it is not clamant . Thus
whatever be the definition of religion, the fact of
dependence on something that is Other and More,the
surplus of Rabindranath Tagore, greater than
the individual cannot be denied. The mystic, on the
other hand, is quite a different type of
personality. He has none of the air of subservience
and surrender. He has the sense to feel that he is
at one with the Infinite but as one who is
participating or rather seeking to participate in
the richness and splendour of the Infinite. He does
not normally lay stress on the unity of all, of
himself with All or the whole, but only on the fact
of finiteness which he cannot tolerate, much less
admit. For him, the law ‘as in the macrocosm so it
is in the microcosm’ must be extended to the fullest
limit so as to grant for the individual an equal
participation, power and plenitude of existence with
the All. The idealistic tendency is of mysticism and
finally it emerges as the instinctive struggle for
moksa, liberation. The mystic is a pioneer,
an asura so to speak, who is anxious to break
the bonds of existence, for he dimly feels that he
shares the fullness in power, light and being with
the All.

Psychologists obsessed by the abnormal types of
personality or paying attention only to
physiological types, underestimate the distinctions
that exist between the two types above mentioned,
namely, the mystical and the religious. Religious
consciousness and mystical experience are however
not contraries.

If a modern classification of types is to be
attempted in terms of extrovert and introvert , we
might say that the mystic type of personality would
appear to be the extrovert and the religious as the
introvert, since according to Jung(Psychological
Types), we find that coercive force, struggle
for mastery, and individuality pertain to the
extrovert, whereas subordination, resignation to
fate, surrender to higher powers and quiet patience
belong to the introvert. This division as will be
seen cuts across that proposed by psychologists who
hold mystical personalities to be introverts.

In the study of the lives of the pioneers in
spiritual experience, the two types we have
mentioned are clearly distinguishable. It is the
truth of the religious man to be conforming to that
which exists as established custom or usage or
tradition, whereas the truth for the mystic is to be
an iconoclast. This distinction in attitudes is
fundamental to any understanding of the Philosophy
of Religious Consciousness. So fundamental is this
distinction that it is strange that there should
ever have been confusion. Religious Consciousness is
definitely dogmatical ( in the Mac Taggartean
sense), whereas the mystical is pantheistic, is
nebulous, and shows itself as the vital overflow of
idealistic tendencies rather than as the intuitive
understanding that defies all dogmatism. Not that
this vitalism is all. Far from it. This
characteristic it has because it is essentially a
struggle against limitation, social, philosophical
or religious. The protest is commensurate in
strength with the felt heaviness of the
bonds.

The via media between these two tendencies
has rarely been found. We find mystics who having
revolted strongly against all limitations finally
discover their destination to be a nihilistic
nirvana, a contentless existence. Buddhistic
thought characterized as it is by mysticism having
struggled against all dogmatism ended in an
experience that might well be called non-existence.
Advaitic thought is essentially mystical, and
its struggles against all forms and names, all
definition and determination, has led it to an
experience that is the culmination of limitless
existence , abstract Freedom-experience.

Religious Experience naturally moves on the wake of
previous revelations. It is, we already said,
characterized by the feeling of dependence, may be
on the past experiences of the race garnered in
proverbs and maxims, or on past speculations and
affirmations on the nature of the Supreme Being or
Reality. Des Cartes in reviving the Ontological
Argument of Anselm really showed his inner
indebtedness to religious experience. As a matter of
fact the rationalist cannot but finally end in
religion. The determination by law of thought,
regulation of the present by past experience and
revelation, is the significant feature of the
religious attitude. It is not often that we find
psychologists defining religion in this manner.
Prof. Mac Taggart in his Some Dogmas of Religion
affirmed that true religion consists in the
acceptance through reason the probable reality of
the Deity, a probability that is almost equivalent
to an assertion of its reality.

If Bruno revealed his mystical iconoclasm, and
Shelley the promethean revolt against all
confirmity, Leibnitz revealed the strict loyalty to
the Deity and Browning the inner synthesis of
religion that has devoutness to the Deity who is the
inward ruler of all life and being. It is always the
mystic who revels in the destruction of barriers to
freedom qua barriers. The problem of freedom
is not and has not been the chief concern of the
religious. Religious Consciousness abides with those
who surrender to the Divine Spirit and with those
who live in the life of the Divine and struggle to
achieve participation and at-oneness with their
Lord, whatever be the changes, crises and calamities
that might assail them. Not that it does not love
freedom and does not plead for extinction of
barriers, but the barriers that it seeks to remove
are the barriers to knowledge, which thwart mutual
love between the Infinite and the finite and promote
separation.

Thus there is a clear-cut distinction between the
two types, or the two attitudes. The dualism is a
serious one. Interpreters of the Upanishads have
sought to explain the text according to their
mystical or religious predilection and have tried to
create a dualism in the texts themselves. This
dualism is possible because two attitudes are real
attitudes, and the personality of the Seer
determines the attitude that he reveals in his
utterances. This is not to state that the content
of the revelation or utterance is of either
partially true or untrue character, but to affirm
that the truth gets itself revealed through the
individual medium of mystical or religious bias.
Vamadeva reveals himself as a Mystic whereas
Vasistha is truly representative of the Religious
Consciousness. However in their revelations,
whatever the particular attitude, the contents
of their experience are relieved from the insularity
of either.

Just as there are no pure types like introvert and
extrovert, so also, mystical consciousness is not
stable in itself, and religious respectively
manifests itself as a dynamic struggle after
liberation from all limitations and separation from
the beloved. A careful student of mystical
experience will find that mystical consciousness,
when strong, proceeds from one destruction to
another, by a deliberate and well-aimed exclusion of
all that interfere with final free experience, even
as Indra proceeded scientifically from one
realization to another, from the discovery of one
sheath to another by a process of unveiling of the
curtains of ignorance, till finally he was
confronted with the realization of his dependence on
some Highest Consciousness full with the plenitude
of infinite richness and delight, bliss and beauty,
in which he must in thraldom live. Such knowledge is
got at slowly and is of the whole and the integral
Being, wherein the individual himself shares the
life of the whole, and finds this ultimate sense of
unity with the All itself to be freedom and
perfection, reality and realization. Mystic
consciousness may start with a pantheistic sense of
Oneness of all life or law, experience or ecstasy,
but at its terminus it transcends the impersonal as
it is gradually drawn into the bosom of the
Super-personal Being that is not less personal but
more personal, fundamentally divorced from the
limitations arising out of the inefficient lower
nature. Mysticism thus, strange as it may appear,
becomes a champion of intellectualism, which defeats
intellect.

Religious Consciousness proceeding from dependence
to dependence on the All, the sarva, and
Isvara, the Lord, is able to throw away the
minor dependences on forms and names and
progressively all that are not of the Lord. Growing
in this illuminated consciousness, it finally
discovers that it has liberated itself from all its
bonds without knowing it. What is essential to it is
the fundamental effort or thirst to love, the
attachment to the Highest that it knows, there is
implied the method of liberation from all others,
all attachments and seekings other than the Highest.
If ever, it struggles to hold on to mere forms and
names and clings to them tenaciously, it is because
these names and forms are constellated in its
consciousness with the Being that it knows and which
it cannot conceive apart from them. If , however,
it clings to these through indolence of spirit,
then what happens is a catastrophe, followed by a
terrible dark night of the soul.

Whether it be the mystical or the religious
consciousness, eternal vigilance is an absolute
condition. That is why the end of Mysticism is
religion, and the result of religion is the
realization of the ideal of mysticism. Psychological
experts of the Upanishads were aware of these
transformations in attitudes and the conditions
under which such transformations can be brought
about. The several vidyas taught in them
clearly reveal the purposive technique of
transference which will lead to the integral
realization. Knowledge is the goal, since
knowledge alone can solve the problems of instincts;
the mystical and the religious tendencies are
instinctive in their nature which have to be
sublimated. Abnormal Nietzsche, the mystic,ended in
the lunatic asylum; the religious dogmatists
enveloped in their own darkend sanctuaries have
brought about the proverbial Dark Age. Synthesis of
both these, samuccaya, or samanvaya , is
possible through the substitution of the ends of
Knowledge and Vision of the All in the places of
greed and selfishness. The multiplex nature of man’s
personality requires an ordering of his inner and
outer being according to the integral unity
that he seeks blindly and vitally and instinctively.

The inner meaning of the dialectic of forces,
mystical and religious, occult and mediumistic,
gnostic and practical, have to understood through
the concept of Integral Personality. These instincts
proceed from different planes and intersect with one
another. We cannot dismiss their existences. What
the Vedic seers did, modern psychologists might yet
discover, On us, as it did on Jung, the Upanishads
and Vedic insights produce an amazement at the depth
of understanding of the real forces of personality.

TWO TYPES OF YOGAtc "TWO TYPES OF YOGA"

Consequences on the distinction made between the
mystical and the religion ‘instincts’, we might say
there emerge two ways of approach to the realization
of the highest. These might be called Yoga. The
mystical proceeds on three lines, in none of which
there need be any postulation of a Diety. Karma
Yoga is the line of action, action that makes
it necessary for the individual to break through
the superstructure 50 religious dogmatism and
involves the consistent practice of the freedom and
responsibility that one inwardly feels to be one’s
own reality. This Karma Yoga is very modern
in conception it might be said; but this kind of
yoga it was that was at the bottom of the Carvakan
ideal of existence, free as the air, irresponsible
and living one’s own desires out. This ideal no
doubt was what even Buddhism sought in its
affirmation of the inward law as against the outer
conformity that Brahminism was said to have imposed.
Hence their practices were non-confirming to the
ritualistic. Even the protest of Samkhya was against
the ritualistic Karma of the orthodox. In all
these, there was acceptance of Action undoubtedly,
but it was something quite different from what the
religious temperament accepted. The activity of the
Karma-Yogin who happen to be a mystic, moves between
the activities of iconoclastic revolutionary fervour
and protestant activity.

The Jnana-Yoga of the Mystic again is
different from the aim of the religious Yogin. The
aim is to discover the real which would liberate the
individual. The belief in reality is dependent on
its capacity to liberate. The practice of Oneness or
Nothingness, is consequential on the
liberation-motive, and so long as the yogin
believes intellectually that any otherness is a
limitation, there is no alternative for him except
the annihilation of all otherness in and through an
oneness that shall be the indescribable womb of all.
But the religious yogin knows that all determination
is negation, and equally that all negation is
determination1.
He does not see the need for any contradiction
between things that could co-exist.

Real opposits contradict one another and might annul
one another, but that co-existent things should
compete and swallow up one another even like some
serpeuts, it is not possible to admit when the terms
describe rather than limit. Jnana or
knowledge is of the whole not of the One. The
individual knowing this whole or unity really
understands his place in this whole and therefore
does not feel afraid. As the Isa-Upanisad says, He
who sees everything in Him, for him there is neither
fear nor revulsion. The mystic ideal of Immortality
lands the Mystic in his intellectual effort in the
abstract realm of ideas or essences or an absloute
that can contain nothing without ceasing to be
itself.

Even so is the Bhakti Yoga . The Bhakti
of the Mystic is the devotion to the
impersonal ideal of Freedom rather than to any
individual whatsoever. The Personal exists, if at
all, as a concession to devotional needs, a fiction
or even a real being much inferior to our own
fullest ideal. Yoga of Patanjali postulates an
Isvara who is a beau ideal, a desirable
object (alambana) for meditation, but certainly not
the ideal or our own existence which is fullest
plenitude of Knowledge, Bliss and Being. The dhyana
is the concentration and loving devotion, even if
only of a ficitonally posited being, and as such at
a later stage what needs to be done is to give up
this and trancend the limits of the object. The
meaning of the Bhagavad Gita Carama Sloka which
insists upon the surrender of the Individual to the
Lord is said to be merely a tentative position,
whereas the most important teaching of the Gita is
said to be the famous sloka,

“Matkarmakrt matparamo madbhaktah
sangavarjitah

Nirvairah sarvabhutesu yahsa mameti
Pandava.”

“Whose work is unto me, whose goal I am, my votary,
free from attachment, void of enmity to any being-he
comes to me. O son of Pandu”XI.55.

The mystic view then consistently persists in its
realization of the immortal which it equates with
liberty or freedom Moksa. Our Whole question
is whether this is a true identification. Religious
conciousness might make certain concessions to this
view, but in the main it repels the idea of abstract
liberty. It is more realistic and tends to value the
true idea of liberty which consists in the
realisation of happiness through the aid of
theHighest Being of which it is aware.

The foundation of the philosophic aspiration lies in
the discovery of the “immortal sense is mortal
existence,” “in the divination of the Godhead,” or
in the realization of the Highest of which the
individual progressively becomes aware. This process
of growing into the consciousness of the All is a
slow progress or rapid one according to the
intensity of fervour and loyalty, sraddha,
and this is the sine qua non of all praxis,
mystical or religious. An unenlightened
consciousness without the capacity or willingness to
the experiment will only lead to disaster and
perdition. Gnosis consists in the perception of the
All, and in having, so to speak, the religious
attitude. Deity must be perceived in all things, to
which all things are tending, in whom all have their
birth, bliss and being. Without this original
fundamental knowledge the mystic effort at freedom,
is mere action that is egoistic and selfish, and can
only lead to darkest darkness, blindest Ignorance.
‘Egoism is the bar.’ The individual must forsake the
sense of possession of anything. Renunciation of the
sense of possession coupled with the sense of the
Allness or Omnipervasive-ness of the Lord is
absolutely the Yoga. Such a fundamental renunciation
of individual possession is the preliminary need.
This too is the method of the Buddhist and the
Nihilistic mystic. The mystic abjures all
possession, for it is essential to be free from all
bonds, and possession has the incubus of bondage.
Freed from this bondage to matter and material
possession, the mystic entertains the hope that he
would be free utterly, and realize the Pure
existence of his own self. However, this
renunciation that is of the mystic, is different
from the renunciation of the Religious. The
attitude is different though the results are
identical. Vairagya of the one is poles apart
from the vairagya of the other. Consecration to the
Divine, because of the realization that nothing is
really one’s own but belongs to the All, is the
essence of the religious theirstic attitude, wheres
the attitude of the mysticreveals the obession of
bondage.

It is true that the mystics or the religious persons
do not realize the wide gulf that exists between the
two attitudes, and facilely and interchangeably
speak about bondage and the body. Even when the
religious person feels the weight of his body on his
soul, it is not because of its own defect as a body
but because the body that he has happens to be a
result of his own ignorance in previous lives and
activites. Not so the own ignorance in previous
lives and activities. Not so the mystic view. The
mystic will strive to realise the Ultimate in his
own privateness, where the privateness somehow will
realize the infiniteness of the All.

The mystic pratice of Raja Yoga as we have remarked
takes up the occult siddhis also into
consideration. The Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama,
Pratyahara, Dharana,Dhyana and Samadhi,
which are the eight steps of Yoga are intended to
purify the individual internally and externally and
develop self-control and mind-control, till finally
the mind is prepared in a such a manner as to be
able to experience utter internal absorption-Nirvikalpaka
Samadhi . This is usually said to lead to
Nirvana and even the Buddhist ‘Manual of the Mystic’
corroborates this procedure.

Religious praxis, on the other hand , devotes all
its yoga to the realization of concentration on the
one and sole object of its efforts, to achieve the
unique relation of dependence aprthaksiddha
sambandha, consciously and fully.
Isvarapranidhana for him has the fullest
significance and is all in his Yoga. The Yoga is
left, as it were, into the hands of the Divine, and
nothing is left for the individual to do but to wait
on the Highest. He depends upon the love, the grace
and the bounty of the Divine. The Highest as the
Upanishads says choses its men; it is not left for
the individual to dictate to the Lord. You cannot
take the heavenes by storm; you must only willingly
supplicate to it for your deliverance from your
deliverance from ignorance which creates ruffles in
sraddha, faith.

It has been one of the most difficult things in
religion to fix the roles played in spiritual
evolution and liberation by God and the Guru.

For those who recognize the two as End and means
respectively there is hardly any difficulty. The
Guru is just the means to God and claims nothing
more than a mediating role. He does not identify
himself with God nor claim any more kinship with
God than that which every other soul has, though
he does claim to be able to lead the soul to
God. There his work ends. He claims no wages
beyond this task of having served His God with
zeal. Men may offer all homage to him for his
efficiency and skill in the discharge of his
holy duty to God. Surely one expects a true Guru
to be in closest nearness to God and inseparably
linked with Him. It would be a travesty if such
a Guru did at any time lead the seeker or led to
feel that he is himself God or His delegate or
vice-regent. The means should never be made an
end, however much the means may be invariably
effective and efficient.

However though the Guru had escaped this
temptation though it is unfortunately not the
present tendency - this cult of identifying the
Guru with the Godhead has become rather a vogue.
Men have created icons and images or statues
which they have begun worshipping with all the
paraphernalia and ritual offered to God. Any
religion which is true to the goal of God
realisation through the help of knowers and
leaders of spirituality cannot permit
identification of the Guru with God, except when
it is realised that God Himself sometimes
directly becomes the means also. When no means
can lead to God except God himself then God
takes on the roles of the Guru and the means.
This involves the assumption that no one other
than God can be the means to God. It is this
principle of identity of end and means which had
led to several men to equate God with Gurus and
vice versa. It is only in respect of the
Ultimate knowledge that this happens not in
respect of other ends.

The commandment of the Veda, Let your mother
become your God, Let your father be deemed to be
thy God, or the final command let thy teacher
become thy God were instructions which had only
a limited application. On the other hand the
mystics had uniformly asserted that Let God
become thy Mother, thy Father and thy Teacher or
Leader to the Ultimate.

The controversy about the role of the Guru or
Acharya thus is very important and the attitude
of the seeker or the disciple should be to
presume or seek such a personality who is God
Himself. No one is competent to lead one to the
Ultimate.

it is therefore understandable that all
teachers claim to be God themselves. They call
themselves or accept to be called Bhagavan God
rather than Bhagavatpada, those who have reached
the world of God or His feet. But the question
is, can there be so many individuals on Earth
who are God? If one alone can be God the rest
must be not Gods. However this question is of
such practical importance that it has become
almost headache to philosophers as well as
laymen.

The real fact seems to be that one is likely
to be followed only if one claims to be God
Himself rather than a messenger or servant of
God who has been instructed to lead the souls to
God only. Though this works pretty well with a
large mass of mankind yet sooner or later one is
confronted with the fact that the claimants
claim is not bonafide or rather unverified or
disproved.

God has to be God and man demands that God is
more than just a leader to His own state, though
this latter function of God is our immediate
concern.

It has been most difficult except for the
exceptionally faithful to identify a mortal
being however ideal with God, the supracosmic
creator, sustainer and saviour of the worlds. So
apparent is the disparity and so irremediable
the gap that is well nigh impossible to say that
any human personality even of the status of the
avatars is God. A new vision is needed, even as
Sri Krishna himself felt the need when he
endowed Arjuna with divine vision - divya
cakhsus. Even then it would be necessary to
reveal the identity of the status of the
Ultimate, God and the Descent, not to mention
their identity with the inner ruler within each
and every individual or oneself.

So the identification sought to be asserted
as necessary for personal attainment of vision
or not even that is rather putting the cart
before the horse. The Guru has to develop in the
individual seeker the capacity to have divine
vision and then if He be God, make him seen Him
as the Guru also. Then alone can we say that the
Divine God has himself become the Guru. It must
not be made to rest on faith either self-induced
or imposed. Evolution of the individual into
being with divine vision etc. alone could
rightly be the test of this identity. For most
it has to be just a chanting formula or
unnecessary for higher evolution. To insist that
God and Guru should not be distinguished or
differentiated is too much of a demand on
personal belief since it does not rest on
personal experience at all.

As stated above only in the case of the
Ultimate Realisation of God does God become the
exclusive means (upaya). He does not seek any
other help or mediator except His own powers.
This is the uniqueness of the Divine Guru.
Therefore for attaining the supreme Liberation
and Perfection or Reality God is stated to be
the only Guru. Therefore has God to be chosen as
the Guru. Let God be thy Guru. May He Himself
direct and guide thy steps on the path of Sahaj
for this is the most natural way to God, suited
to spirituality.